


As She Hit the Open Road

by elanurel



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Community: spn_xx, Drama, F/M, Fairy Tales
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-19
Updated: 2010-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:37:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elanurel/pseuds/elanurel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Before the accident, Lia's biggest problem was finishing her <b>Sociology of Consumption</b> term paper after she helped Jeannie with her laundry but an oncoming truck knocked Lia straight out of her body and into a twilight nightmare - and now some thing from one of her mother's bedtime stories wants her heart.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	As She Hit the Open Road

Cinderella stepped out of her glass slippers,   
threw down that new apron,   
put on a pair of old Doc Martens,   
and stomped right out the door.   
The prince was still chewing on his bacon   
as she hit the open road,   
said life is full enough of disappointment   
to go kissing any toad.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

There were lights, a kaleidoscope of dizzy colors behind the metallic wrench that slammed her into the asphalt, and an ache sizzled behind her lungs with each diamond-edged breath that dragged through her. There was charred flesh and a high keening, the old washer woman at the stream twisting blood out of clothes with her tear-stained sing-song voice.

Even the moon was bleeding, a red haze across her eyes as she let her head rest easy.

As she let go.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_When two men decided to write down the old stories, they began them the same way they tell every tale – with a once upon a time that follows the road to happily ever after. But when women tell the tales, there is always a different beginning because stories, like everything that is true and false, change to suit their purposes._

_This is the story of a girl with six older brothers._

_Her name was Gwyneth, all luck and skinned knees; able to recite the litany of her brothers' names by the time she was three. Padrig, nearly a man in all of her memories. Nuerin, whose laugh could make the world perfect. Rhys, who sucked the juice from every apple. Deiniol, the balance point who sat between them all. Sion, with a fortune of his own that rivaled tricksters. Twm, the twin soul to her own._

_They all lived together as brothers and sisters do in a white stone fortress surrounded by trees. Their father would take them on hunts, from the youngest to the oldest, and sometimes – when the moon was full – their mother would teach them dances. They played around the biggest oak tree they could find, leaving milk and honey for the Kindly Ones on special days and learning secrets known only to their mother, who whispered old stories of fortune and the heroes who save their princesses._

_They were happy together, though no one was happier than Gwyneth – with her older brothers to protect her and parents who loved her like the she was the sun hung up in the sky. There were always flowers and there were always stories until the morning she stumbled into her parents' room. The house was quiet, her brothers arranged in a circle around the bed where their mother was dying, and Gwyneth burst through them; she flung herself onto the bed while her mother stroked her hair, her seventh blessing._

_A good luck charm._

_Their father mourned like fathers do but life went on. Her brothers grew into men, fine and strong – each with a gift she could trace back to their mother. Gwyneth grew up, too, but she didn't grow old; always small, always the baby, and always protected by men so fierce they could give the Dark Ones pause._

_Even Gwyneth somehow found the thing inside of herself that everyone has to find to move past grieving into living, the promise of a dream in her mother's old herb garden. A hero's smile._

_And the Dark Ones grew jealous. Without despair, there was hope – and hope diminished their numbers._

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

The doctor droned inside a hollow tunnel, his soft tones interrupted by her father's sharp voice.

"We're _not_ turning off the machines. It's only been a fucking week!"

There was no arguing with Dad when he sliced through a conversation. Her father had intimidated stronger men than some young intern whose only crime was repeating the bad news given to him by a specialist. The poor man was talking about her brain activity being off, how it was 'weirder than anything anyone's ever seen.'

Mom usually stepped in when Dad was being Dad. This time, she didn't say a word about how he needed to calm down or that he should let the doctor finish what he was saying; she followed up the intern's pronouncement with a sharp intake of breath.

"Hey," Lia said softly, her voice rough in her throat as she started opening her eyes; the vertigo made her feel like she was falling backwards even though she was lying down. And every piece of her body ached. Head. Muscles. Fingers. Stomach. _Skin_. She had tangled with a truck and won. Well, sort of. The idiot who plowed into her while she was walking with Jeannie to the laundromat had roared off down the road with Jeannie's 'oh God, hang on' right in her ear.

At least she had an excuse now for not finishing her _Sociology of Consumption_ term paper.

"Dad…"

He wasn't even listening, going on about how they were a strong family and all she needed was time to heal. Mom was demanding the name of the specialist who used the term 'weird' in his or her prognosis.

Lia coughed. "I'm awake, Dad. Mom?"

They ignored her.

Lia blinked, eyelids fluttering against the white light shooting through her head. _Focus._ Another rumble of nausea in her belly and she felt something solid on her back, hard like a barricade and cold like a slab of ice.

But she wasn't lying down at all, leaning up against the wall next to her bed with her arms folded across her chest. Dad was still arguing with the doctor and Mom was at his side, both of them looking more like thunderclouds than Lia ever thought possible. They were worse than teenagers most of the time, all over each other and grossing out Tom whenever they all went out for miniature golf.

_Fuck me…_

She wouldn't be playing miniature golf for a long time, judging from the broken thing on the hospital bed covered with wires and filled with tubes. Lia held her stomach tightly, fighting back a sob while she watched Lizzie massage her right hand – the only part of Lia's body that wasn't covered in bandages. Lia couldn't feel the pressure of Lizzie's tiny fingers, rubbing on her hand like it was a lamp full of wishes, and she leaned over just enough when her stomach contracted to avoid puking on her bare feet.

Lia wiped the back of her hand against her mouth before she started gagging again, bent over as far as she could go, but the body on the bed just lay there while Lia sank to her knees.

"Am I dying?"

Her voice sounded as tiny as Lizzie's little sobs but no one answered her; the doctor sounded like he was speaking in a whisper despite raising his voice to be heard over her father.

She rocked back on her heels, wrapping her arms around herself again like Dad used to do when she was ten. They were shadow-figures with auras, getting farther away the longer she tried to listen, and she wondered why she could still hear herself breathe; could still hear Dad's low growl against her back while he held her tight, telling her bedtime stories about monsters so that she could scare the pants off of her friends at slumber parties.

_Who the hell told you that werewolves were a cliché, Lia? They are freaking badass. You got that?_

None of it was real; it was morphine or whatever goddamn painkiller was dripping through her veins. They caused hallucinations – Johnny swore up and down for three days that there was a walking tree talking to the big oak in the back yard after he broke his arm, just like the walking trees in those old movies they used to watch over Christmas vacation, and that was just Percocet. God alone knew what kind of medicated cocktail was sticking her in La-La-Limbo-Land while she died.

Maybe that was a good thing – something to make her forget that she was dying.

The blinking machines reflected off the tracks on Lizzie's tear-stained face and Mom sat down on the chair next to the bed, pulling Lizzie up into her lap and burying her nose in Lizzie's curls. The machines were going crazy, a high-pitched keening, but Lizzie never let go of Lia's hand – rubbing it slowly, like it was the only thing that was important in the world, with fingers she couldn't feel as she curled up against the wall.

She closed her eyes but she couldn't rest easy, not while she could still feel herself breathe.

Not while she could still hear her father's muffled roar, just enough rope to hold onto.

"The machines are staying _on_. You listening to me, _Doctor_?"

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Rough hands hitched her up, digging underneath her arms, and something sickly sweet slammed through her – a smell like none she'd ever known before.

"Your grandmother made a bargain once, a life for each year stolen from her, but she did not understand the rules." There was a sigh, slow and patient as his vowels stretched around themselves and looped against consonants. "Your mother broke them entirely, with the help of a trickster and more than a little luck. It was a fool's bargain." He was laughing, scraping into her bones with a smile she could feel. "And now _you_ are here, the promise delivered." Her heels dragged across the rough surface. "A dying daughter for a murdered son."

Lia choked back a moan; she wasn't about to let some asshole see her cry.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_The Dark Ones hatched a plan to bring the family down._

_The greatest of them was called Rion and he sent his youngest child to Gwyneth's father wrapped in secrets and lies. Aeronwen ferch Rion was fashioned from bright shine and tattered enchantments, a creature of falsehood and dishonesty who whispered half-truths in her father's ear every night that Aeronwen shared his bed; lies about his sons' unnatural desires and untruths about the shame lurking in the green eyes of a girl who kept close to the shadows, all seven of them bringing despair upon the name they shared._

_Their father believed the stories, intoxicated with the bansidhe's milk-white thighs and red hair so radiant it looked like new-minted copper coins in the sunlight. He banished the brothers from home during the planting festival on the very same day he took Aeronwen to wife – but it was her stepmother who scattered them to the winds with a curse upon their very souls._

_Gwyneth screamed when the words rang home and her mother's name was the first blessing that she could muster. Instead of dying, Gwyneth's brothers gave shrill cries and the air was filled with white feathers as their arms turned to wings. Six white swans lifted themselves from the floor of her father's hall and flew through an open window like the sky itself was swallowing them whole._

_Aeronwyn shrieked her rage as the last flew through the window, turning her flashing eyes upon Gwyneth._

_But Gwyneth was already running out the door of her father's white stone fortress and into the night. She recited the litany of her brothers' names, calling to them silently as she ran and wishing the wind would carry them back to her even though she knew that wishes were hard won; they had no power without the heart's desire. When she could no longer hear the shouts of her father's men or the barking of his dogs, Gwyneth collapsed within the roots of the largest oak tree._

_The Crone's moon hung dark in the sky._

_Gwyneth did not recognize her mother's oak tree until she woke up. Arms encircled her and her mother's voice – as cool and soothing as every mother's voice in the world – brushed against her forehead with a soft kiss. Gwyneth couldn't make out her mother's features, staring into a face so bright that only the bare outlines of her mother's eyes could be seen. They used to be as green as her own._

_'Your brothers cannot return home,' her mother said, 'Until their curse is lifted.'_

_The Kindly Ones had intervened when Gwyneth called her mother's name, opposing the sorceress' darkling magic with a counter curse. Aeronwyn's curse was meant to kill the brothers but a woman's plea had gainsaid her will and a woman's task could unweave the spell before the sorceress' plan could come to its fruition._

_Gwyneth was the only daughter of their blood alive to perform the task. If she failed, her brothers would be called back home on the seventh spring to be killed. Until that time, on all but one night a year, her brothers would be trapped in the bodies of swans._

_She agreed to the task, binding herself with a promise before she knew the bargain she had struck. Gwyneth had six winters to weave a garment for each of her brothers – shirts made of nettle. Her mother had taught her much of herbs when she was alive and Gwyneth knew that every nettle would cut into her hands, that the scars would roughen her skin_

_And, like all women's tasks, Gwyneth would suffer alone. She could neither speak nor laugh nor utter a cry until her brothers were saved. To speak but one word, to give one cry of pain, would unweave the spell and the magic Gwyneth had been given would be undone._

_She never asked why. There was a price for every miracle._

__

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_ It was dark and it was wet and it was cold, hair dripping around her shoulders and it didn't matter whether her eyes were open or not because it felt like she was moving through ink – slow like molasses, with a chill that made her teeth ache every time there was a catch in her lungs. _

_ Being dead sucked ass._

_ Lia stretched out onto her back, smooth stone underneath her fingers as she stared out into the black. There were no walls, just an echo in her ears that reminded her of the heartbeat she had once – slow and steady, the drumming in her veins. A snuffling noise, like someone was crying, and a scuttling sound of claws clicking against the floor accompanied the rhythm of her lungs. _

_And she was hungry, the throb howling against her spine as she listened; wishing she could hear the rumble of her father's voice or the way her mother's laugh made everything alright in the world instead of a wail that sounded like it was bubbling, wet and thick._

_ She sat up, a rush of lights behind her eyes as nausea poured through her. Dank air sent a humid coil that burrowed into her lungs and stayed there. It kick-started the pain in her chest, the one-two-three beat stilted against her ribs until a second gasp of air became one-two-three-four and the dark receded just enough for her to make out _shapes_._

Some of them might have had two legs along with the ragged outline of tattered wings or hands trailing the floor with long fingers tipped with their own set of blades; Freddy Krueger come to life with razor-thin knives scritch-scritch-scratching across the floor as it walked with a bent-over tilt.

One thin ray of light, cast with too much green to be natural, eddied down from what passed for the ceiling. Its illumination did nothing to set the pounding between her bruised ribs at ease, as bodies covered with the glimmering shimmer of fur blowing in a moonlight breeze moved side by side with things whose glittering eyes reflected back at her like almonds.

Whatever had killed her saw fit to let her keep her heart as a joke, locked tight within her chest instead of a box, and there was a deep chuckle as the rabbit ran out of its cage.

One-two.

One-two-three.

One.

One.

One.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

When Lia was little, she used to sit on the stairs with her brothers and wait.

Mom would be curled up on the couch, reading one of her magazines with its shiny cover – something that Dad would laugh at and call _scientific_, like it was an insult even though it made both of them start kissing until Samuel made gagging noises. Sometimes, though, she'd look up from what she was reading and rest her chin on her hand, staring out the window whenever a car drove by.

But no matter how quiet they were, Mom would always hear when Bobby sneezed or Jacob sniffled and she would smile and make a big deal about figuring out where the noise came from, pouncing onto the stairs with a boo and a laugh. She'd stay there with them until Daddy's big black car roared up into the driveway and he stumbled through the door with Uncle Sammy's white face over his shoulder.

Uncle Sammy believed in hugs but it was always Daddy who held on the longest whenever they came home.

Other moms would have sent them to bed, would have told them that their father's business trips were normal and daddies went away from their families every day. Her friend Ashley's dad went on trips all the time and her mom never stayed up with her and Lia guessed she was lucky because Mom told stories while they waited.

She saved the special ones for when it was just the two of them.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_Gwyneth wandered for days, going deep into the forest. She was guided by a nearby stream, picking up nuts and berries along the way, until she came upon a field of nettles. A shaft of sunlight pointed her towards a cave hidden behind an overgrown bush, nothing more than a divot in the side of a mountain, but it had rough tunics to wear, a small cot and sturdy weaving implements made out of a wood she did not recognize._

_The moment she was settled, Gwyneth started collecting nettles; cooling her hands as best she could in the stream and watering the plants with her silent tears. It hurt, her lips covered in scabs from all the times she bit down to keep from crying out. Even weeks later, with work-worn hands built from scabbed skin and cuts that healed, there was still the slash of the plant as its edges dug into her flesh – every turn of the wheel and every warp of her cloth brought a burn that never went away._

_But it was not a life without blessings._

_Gwyneth always had food to eat, left outside her cave in the night – normally fruit or, if she was lucky, a brace of rabbits with their legs tied together. The water in the stream was always fresh, always cool to the touch, and when the weather turned cold there were still things to wear. And because she was alone, there was no one to tell her that it was a delusion, that the Kindly Ones had not been protecting her, or that her task was simply the self-indulgent delusions of a discarded daughter._

_When the sun sank beyond the horizon on the first anniversary of her brothers' curse, the wind beat in the sky and six swans alighted in front of her cave._

_They did not understand why she said nothing, or why Gwyneth still continued with her task, and they all wished aloud that she would laugh or tell them the reason they roamed the night as swans. She could not even tell them that they had one night together, that they could only stay until the sun rose. All she could do was hug them and continue in her task. Twm brought her bowls of cool water for her hand while Rhys and Neurin cooked their dinner – and, all the while, she continued sewing the sleeves onto the first shirt. Padrig wiped her tears._

_She finished the first shirt while they sat around a fire, telling old stories of when they were growing up until the wind called them away and she was alone._

_Gwyneth did not mind. Her exile would not be forever._

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_ Hell was a crematorium._

_ Dad would have seen the joke in that, laughing like a lunatic when he saw small metal ovens stuck into the walls. It made sense – even if it was a little perverse that the ovens never burned. That didn't change the fact that Hell was a crematorium full of creatures cobbled together from the skins of animals and the discarded parts of anyone's worst nightmare. There was moaning and wailing, all observed by the watchful eyes of metal ovens where no one burned and the doors were rusted shut. _

_In Hell, everyone was bathed in a sickly green light and she was one of two creatures in the whole place with smooth skin and voices that didn't crackle when they spoke._

_ Lia tried to resist eating but whatever had tricked her heart into beating had also tricked her stomach into believing that she was hungry. After the lion's roar pushed into her spine, Lia grabbed one of the bowls that was shoved in her direction and scooped the thick gruel into her mouth on cupped fingers; stopping long enough to hear the snuffle from the monster with porcupine quills and the face of a baby. It was staring at the empty trays with broken eyes and Lia offered it what was left in her bowl._

_ The thing scrabbled towards her and snatched the bowl from her hands, curling up around her leg with a scratch that made her shudder. It smelled like a cesspool, like crusty organisms were buried deep underneath its quills, but its breath was a wheeze that reminded her of blinking lights and the whine off the machines. _

_ "You shouldn't help something until you know what it is."_

_ The voice was dark against her elbow and Lia recognized the accent. The man's face might have been handsome if it weren't covered in so much oil and grime, the same way that his hair might have been blonde if it was unmarked by soot and ash. And he might have been from New York, if they were both still alive instead of being punished in the crematorium from hell._

_ "Why not?" she asked. It still felt like someone was scratching her throat with sandpaper every time Lia spoke._

_ "Because some of these things would kill you as soon as look at you," the man snapped. "The only thing that keeps you safe is that they're _weak_." But he was patting the baby-faced thing on the arm, smiling down at it. _

Lia blinked. If some idiot was rubbing the damn thing, that meant it was probably safe. It was a moot point anyway. "What does it matter?" she asked. _We're **not** turning off the machines. It's only been a fucking week._ Even Dad wouldn't be able to hold off the administration if her body was that broken. She'd left behind a living will but the man across from her was looking at her like she was crazy anyway. "We're dead," Lia added.

He snorted. "Where the hell do you think we are?"

"Precisely," she answered.

She must have passed the test.

The porcupine creature clucked in the back of its throat, shaking its baby face from side to side. "This isn't Hell, kind pretty. You're getting fattened up for the Big Man."

"Big Man?" It sounded just like something from one of her mother's stories. Mom was pretty superstitious for a scientist, saying that you could find every true thing in the old stories – you just needed to know how to look hard enough to find it. The man shook his head, folding his arms across his chest and sinking down on his heels next to her.

"He holds court in the Tower by the Lake," the creature explained. "He needs you alive."

"Why would some Big Man holding _court_ in the Tower by the Lake need a sociology major?" She said it loud enough that the room was full of gasps and groans and sharp-eyed stares, dizzying colors that watched her and shifted like the inside of a kaleidoscope; even the asshole sitting next to her placed a warning hand on her arm with a quick shake of his greasy hair.

"Because your heart is your mother's heart, and your mother's mother's heart," the baby-faced thing answered with a reedy-thin smile, teeth sharp pricks that should have pulled rubies from its lips. "A bowl full of wishes, just waiting to be cracked open and drunk."

_Fuck…_

A part of her was actually hoping for Hell, remembering that story Uncle Sam used to tell about her grandpa crawling his way out using nothing but a little bit of luck and sheer stubbornness. She'd always chalked it up as metaphorical, another one of his stories about monsters that he used to illustrate one of life's problems, because he only pulled it out when she was studying for exams or having a problem with one of her brothers that she didn't want to bring to Mom or Dad.

Now, she hoped that it was true.

The dead guy from New York stared at her like she was insane and he'd only think she was crazier if she told him that maybe things were going to work out after all, that they had a little bit of hope, because she was descended from a man who clawed his way out of Hell.

And she was going to find the way out even if it killed her all over again.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

She opened her eyes the second time they brought her to the room.

It still had the same sickly smell, like the bloom was fading from a rose and all that was left underneath was rot and decay. The walls were bare and she slumped to the floor the moment whatever was holding her up by the arms let go, her legs going numb from the shock of standing on them too long. Lia caught a glimpse of the lake outside the large picture window, blue against the big black desk.

The carpet dug into Lia's hands, sharp against her palms after too many days of feeling nothing but smooth stone. She had tried keeping track of time but it eddied and swirled around her, flickering like a hummingbird's wings and hiding in its shell when she stopped to breathe. Whenever she closed her eyes, Lia remembered the voice.

_Your grandmother made a bargain once, a life for each year stolen from her, but she did not understand the rules._

Lia didn't understand the rules, either – stuck in a world that smelled like dying flowers and looked like antiseptic waiting rooms, where her shadow lay awake in the dark next to a man from New York who hummed too much and the only doors led to ovens that never burned.

_Your mother broke them entirely, with the help of a trickster and more than a little luck. It was a fool's bargain._

"The promise delivered," she whispered. Whatever that meant. _A dying daughter for a murdered son._ Lia shivered, holding herself with her arms. She was trapped in a nightmare and retracing her steps only brought her back to that moment when the truck slammed her backwards and she hit the open road. How did a promise come out of a one-way collision with a truck?

Her question was answered by a door sliding open on the far wall.

"It was a promise made to me."

She turned her head, eyes focusing on the figure that glided into the room. He was tall, dressed in a black pinstripe suit – the white stripes as thin as one thread on the warp – but his hair was like no shade of red Lia had ever seen. It shimmered like his skin under the fluorescent lighting, as crimson as drying blood. The same color flashed in his dark eyes, as though he plucked death out of everything and added it to the rot of his inner sanctum, a barren room where he held court with Lake Michigan blinking like a jewel outside of his window.

The man sat down, dark eyes appraising her as he laced long fingers together on top of his desk. Lia had never felt so small, a tiny heap on the carpet while she looked up at him. She gagged. The smell was worse now that he had entered, dry like powder and choking up her lungs, and his hands were white spiders – twitching on the worn wood while he watched her expectantly, a gracious prince allowing his guest the first word.

He didn't even look like he was breathing, his chest still while he waited.

The only way out was to go farther in.

"A promise made by whom?" she asked softly, sucking in a breath. Her lungs hurt, full of his sugary corrosion.

"It is rare to find one whose command of grammar hearkens back to the days when your language was new and _rules_ meant something." He smiled, leaning forward on his elbows. He had straight teeth, no sharp points like the things back in the crematorium, and he would have looked human except for his hair and his hands. Hair that looked wet and hands that were as dry as spiders and a chest that never moved, even when he was speaking. "I suspect that is another quality you inherited from your mother."

"Like my heart?" Lia demanded. "That's why I'm here, right? Getting fattened up for you? Because I have my mother's heart." He didn't deny it, his eyes going round with a slow curious smile as he looked down at her; she was his toy, all the more precious because she figured out the game.

Lia pushed on the ground and rose to her feet, stumbling as her legs went numb all over again, but she wasn't about to slump back down no matter how badly her legs trembled. "But not if I get out first." And wherever here was, it was closer to home than Hell. Lia recognized the downtown Chicago skyline when she peered through the window. She just needed to find a door and the potion that made her small enough to slip through the keyhole and then Lia would run like a rabbit all the way back to campus.

"And though she be but little, she is fierce."

She rolled her eyes, a slow burn creeping from the top of her head and spreading slowly down to her fingertips and toes. If she had a quarter for every time an idiot decided to quote _A Midsummer Night's Dream_, Lia could buy a semester's worth of textbooks without dipping into her grant money.

"My parents will find me."

"Your parents believe you are a broken shell. I switched their Lia for mine, bringing you into the Twilight Lands and leaving your father a changeling as a parting gift." His hair was moving on its own, blowing in a breeze that Lia couldn't feel any more than she felt her niece's hand. "Once the machines are turned off and the changeling dies, there will be no one left to fight for you."

"My mother will realize that thing in the hospital isn't me." Lia curled her hands into fists while her legs fought to crumble under his dark-eyed stare. Mom had already started following up on the clue, demanding to talk to a neurologist. The changeling's brain activity was 'weird' – even for a girl dying in a coma. Lia smiled. "And then my father will start looking for me. You're as good as dead."

It was as true as the sky being blue or grass being green.

Dark eyes flashed crimson and no amount of twisting could keep those hands from fluttering like broken birds on a black desk. The sky darkened outside the window and storm clouds rolled into view, until his thin shoulders stopped shaking underneath his pinstriped suit.

"That, little one, is the reason you are here," he managed. His voice took on a wild accent, smelling as much like rotting apples as anything – of green grass mowed down before it burned. "Your father's propensity for _murder_ garnered the attention of many, those above and those below and the ones who live in the twilight between. He sidestepped his fate with your uncle's faith and your mother's luck and your family's penchant for bargains riding through both sides of your blood but there is no power protecting you from me. Your fate was sealed the moment he killed my son." He licked his lips. "There are rules. I invoked them."

"You're lying."

"You know that I am not," he returned. His voice was patient, explaining a math problem to a child that didn't understand the method. "All those trips your father takes? Did you never ask what he did, all those times he returned in the middle of the night with new cuts and bruises?" Even his smile was kindly, teeth hidden by plump lips that didn't look out of place no matter how thin the rest of him was. "My son was simply taking his pleasure in the chase and he was discriminate in his feeding but your uncle and your father tracked him down and slaughtered him in his own hunting grounds like he was nothing more than a dog." He snorted. "_Humans_. They thought a Lord's son was a _pouka_."

The room was so cold; if Lia could have scratched her way out, she would have ice crystals underneath her fingernails.

_Do you believe in fairies, Daddy?_

It made sense. Mom's green eyes watching out the window every night Dad was gone until the car roared up into the driveway. Dad's stupid self-defense lessons and the hours he and the boys spent at the firing range. All the scars that Dad and Uncle Sam never tried to hide but would never talk about, their whispered conversations in hallways or the backyard – Dad looking pissed and Uncle Sam looking insistent. Whispers of 'no one else can save them' or 'I've been tracking this thing for weeks' or 'it's the real thing this time, Dean' and 'not some kids causing trouble for shits and grins' that Lia always ignored because she was just a kid and adults never made any sense anyway.

_Well, I met your mom because of a pouka. Things kind of went downhill after she tricked me into keeping an eye on her and now there's you and your brothers._

"I'm guessing your son didn't fall far from the tree."

It was the wrong thing to say.

He grinned with his perfect white teeth and something came down hard on the back of her skull, nothing on his face to give away the blow but a pleasant smile like she'd asked about the weather and he was talking about lawn tennis. Her legs finally collapsed; the carpet rough against her cheek as she tumbled into a midnight so dark that it was peaceful.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_The forest sent Gwyneth two protectors during the second summer of her task._

_They were rough-looking men, dressed in dappled greens and grays, who stumbled into her clearing. The taller one had wild eyes and a shock of dark hair that rippled in the wind. The man with hazel eyes, short only in comparison to the dark-haired man he was leaning against, pitched forward with a moan and started bleeding on the grass in front of her._

_Despite the thickness of her fingers, Gwyneth was a deft hand with a needle and she remembered her mother's lessons. The shorter man's wound was neatly sewn and the tall man looked at her with something like approval as she packed the wound with healing herbs and bandaged it. Gwyneth probably should have been frightened of them, dressed like hunters with the silence of thieves, but there was something in the way the taller man smiled that made her want to trust him._

_And, when a pair of hazel eyes focused on the dark-haired man and the wounded one made a jest, Gwyneth knew that they would not hurt her. They spoke with the remembered familiarity of brothers._

_The older brother, the one who had been injured, was called Griffin. He would tease her while she worked and he was never satisfied until Gwyneth cracked a smile, even when she did not look up from her loom or her wheel. The younger brother, Wynfor, knew something of herbs himself and he made salves for her hands that numbed the pain just enough that Gwyneth did not have to stop working every hour to put her hands in the stream._

_They were good company, for all that they talked too much and she never spoke a word. While Griffin healed, he and Wynfor would speak of their adventures. Gwyneth was no fool and she pieced together their history as much from the things they did not say as the stories they told._

_Her family was not the only one ravaged by a Darkling's magic. Her protectors were also victims, having lost their mother to a foul creature when they were but children. Their father had fallen recently in the fight to avenge her; Gwyneth recognized the dull edge of grief that marked their actions when they were unwary. But where she wove shirts to break a curse, they took up sword and spell to hunt the things that felled the innocent while they continued on their quest._

_Gwyneth carried the burden of knowing this as silently as she carried her other secrets._

_At night, Wynfor would shiver on his bed of rushes near their small fire while Griffin listened, having such dreams that his cries alone made Gwyneth's chest crack. She would wake up and put a cool cloth on his head, until he fell into a sleep that – while not restful – was silent. And then she would sit on the log next to Griffin, with a lapful of nettles to sort, while he kept watch._

_Gwyneth fell asleep once and woke up with her head resting on his shoulder._

_Griffin never asked her what she was doing. Unlike Wynfor, he just accepted that it was something she needed to do – just as he accepted her, the night she set her basket of nettles down by the log and took him by the hand. They lay down together under the stars, with nothing but air between them. Every brush of her hands across his flesh ached, and he shuddered wherever her scarred fingers touched, but she needed to feel all of him once the push and the pain subsided, wishing she could cry out his name instead of biting her lip against the lines of old cuts._

_She remembered the look in Griffin's eyes when he realized the gift he had unknowingly given her, his body awestruck against the moon that hung above them in the sky. There might have been magic in that first blood, in the way that it spurred him into apologies until she smiled and touched his cheek. They danced their pleasure in the grass, his gasps and her unspoken promises._

_But the next morning, the brothers were gone._

__

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_ Lia never thought it was possible to actually puke up her guts, even after her last round with the stomach flu, but vomiting was all she could remember doing since her eyes trembled open and someone started rubbing her back – one arm braced around her waist because she started falling over, elbows and knees going weak. It was hummingbird wings beating as strongly as her heart flickered in her chest, the rabbit trapped with nowhere to run, until finally it was just her stomach muscles contracting on their own because they'd been doing it for so long._

_ Her body curled into a half-sitting fetal position against what she thought was a wall. And there was no way she was waiting around before that thing with spiders for hands cracked her open, spilling her like some kind of oracle. _

_ She had to get out._

_ "Here." It was a New York accent and something cold brushed against her lips. "Drink this." He sighed. "Slowly."_

_ Lia sipped at the water, eyes adjusting to the green-grainy light. The baby-faced creature was coiled around her leg, looking up at her with a smile, and she realized it was keeping her warm. She brushed one hand against the quills, getting ready to pull back when they pricked her, but they were soft. Other figures, small and large and misshapen, were placed around her in a perfect semi-circle – growling in loops and whorls at other things marching back and forth in front of them. _

_ She was being guarded. _

_ "But…" she began, a stone dropping into a pond._

_ "Because you stood up to him," the baby-faced creature said. "To _Rion_."_

It was more like making a fool of herself with the first temper tantrum she'd had since Anita Brown made fun of her Tonka trucks; she'd even pulled out the Daddy card, only to have it completely shot down. And these creatures, monsters from her mother's stories, were protecting her; seven of them in a semi-circle and not one of them looked like a Dopey or a Doc. Lia blinked, eyes filling with tears – she might have to get herself out but it didn't look like she was on her own.

"_Why_?" she asked.

A child's blue eyes watched her. The guy from New York coughed, leaning in close; his breath hot against her ear. "Because some of them remember being human," he whispered. She recoiled, going flat against the wall. "They're all here for a reason," he added, sinking back onto his heels and pulling away. "He takes things for power – bits of themselves freely given for a gift or a favor. And they change."

_There was a price for every miracle._

"I used to be like you, once, but my mommy got sick. In the war," the baby-faced thing said. "And Gran knew some magic. She told me that I had to be brave for Mama." His voice wobbled and Lia hoped like hell that he was talking about the Iraq war because the idea of being stuck in a crematorium for that long, trapped in his porcupine-quilled body, was enough to make her chest crack open all on its own. The little creature thumped its chest with one clawed fist. "Matthew…" He grimached and shook his head. "Just…Matthew."

"Lia," she said, brushing one of her own tears off of Matthew's forehead. _I used to be like you, once, but my mommy got sick._ "Lia Winchester." She looked up at the guy from New York.

"Alexander Thomas Newbery," he replied automatically. And then he frowned. "You shouldn't be so free with your name, Lia."

She frowned back. "It's not like I gave you the whole damn thing, Alexander Thomas _Newbery_." Hell, she hated the whole damn thing for all that she was named after both of her grandmothers. Mom and Dad had picked out the most old-fashioned versions of the names they could find, which didn't seem fair and bordered on ludicrous given that Mom had the same problem with Penelope. Lia suited _her_ just fine.

"Call me Alex."

"You shouldn't be so free with your name, Alex."

They stared at each other for about thirty seconds until Alex started laughing. Lia joined in, feeling the burn in her abdomen. Her 'ow, ow, ow' only made them laugh harder, her head suddenly resting on Alex's shoulder and Matthew moving onto her lap. He still smelled like a cesspool when he was close but Matthew fit in her arms just like Lizzie, with enough room for Lia's chin to settle on top of his head.

_She told me that I had to be brave for Mama._

She squeezed Matthew tight to her chest.

"What the hell are you?" Alex asked.

"I'm a sociology major at the University of Illinois, plagued with six older brothers and more cousins than I can shake a stick at," Lia said. She didn't know why it was important for him to know that. "I used to think my dad restored furniture but…I'm still pretty sure my mom's a bioengineer. You?"

"A rich kid," he answered. "I was studying biochemistry at NYU." He started laughing again when she made a face – science put her to sleep – but then Alex's brow furrowed. "Wait a minute. There's a Dr. Winchester doing cutting edge cancer research out at Rice Laboratories."

"I know. That's my mom." It was a conversation meant for a small back table, eating peanuts together and sipping on their beers while some earnest young folk singer was wailing away on her guitar. Lia sighed. At least the lighting was appropriate – and he _looked_ like any guy she'd meet in a bar, even if he needed a bath and a change of clothes. "Why are you here? You're…" She caught 'normal' right before it slipped out of her mouth.

"Human?" Alex provided. Lia nodded. "Well, you're direct," he observed.

"It's a family curse."

Alex sucked in a breath when she uttered 'curse,' one finger trailing the edge of the hole on the right knee of his jeans. "I'm a hostage, an only child being kept to ensure my father's good behavior. He's a zoning commissioner in New York and Rion has plans to move his base of operations there."

"That thing dabbles in real estate?" She didn't want to know what a thing like that needed a base of operations for, given that he seemed to be doing a brisk business in misery out of a crematorium and an office that was best described as beige.

"That thing is an _Unseelie_ Lord," Alex replied. "Real estate is probably the least of it. He's been passing himself off as human for centuries. And the Unseelie live for power. It doesn't matter where they get it from these days." His brown eyes settled on her face.

Her childhood was full of stories about the Sidhe and even the goodly kind didn't have sparkly wings or dance around wearing flowers and cute little expressions like in all those Brian Froud books. Her mother would always say that hope diminished the Unseelie the same way that the dark moon stole luck.

They were supposed to be fairy tales, bedtime stories passed down from mother to daughter for three generations – all suddenly made true by Rion's eyes full of drying blood.

"He's not getting anything out of me that he doesn't take," Lia returned evenly.

"I really wish that you wouldn't make vast pronouncements like that." Her back stiffened when Alex slipped his arm across her shoulders but all they had left were the memories of how they used to act. She wasn't about to give them up to a place that smelled like it was already dying because of things like 'too soon' and 'strangers need to be cautious.' Comfort from strangers was comfort all the same. "This place has a way of twisting your words to get what it wants," Alex added.

"That's because the Twilight Lands are six inches left of center." Mom had called it a world of bright shine and tattered enchantments where even the Kindly Ones were capricious if you were impolite. _If you don't follow the rules, Lia._ She swallowed and looked down at Matthew. He was breathing slowly, his eyes closed as he rested his head against her chest.

It was the first time she'd ever seen Matthew asleep.

"I wish…" Lia began, hearing the gasps around her as the words slipped out. Lia swallowed. "I wish I had met you under different circumstances, Alex."

"Me, too." There was a smile in his voice that reminded her of Johnny when her brother was cracking a joke. "I'm guessing you clean up nice when you're not wearing a hospital gown."

"I'm usually not puking everywhere, either."

"Good to know," Alex said lightly. His chuckle was nothing like Rion's, a light thing in such a dark place. "But I'd be remiss if I didn't tell you that you have a nice ass."

Lia tilted her head up to look up at him, a blush on his cheeks visible in what passed for light. She almost kissed him, hitching herself up to brush her lips against his because he blushed even darker after he realized that Lia was staring at him, but they were sitting in a crematorium surrounded by poor people giving up pieces of themselves and hoping for a miracle.

She told herself later that it was because of Matthew, sleeping in her arms. And later still, when it mattered most, it would be too late.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Lia always knew that her family was different.

They had rites of passage and weird rituals built into every holiday – even the ones that no one else celebrated – and none of them were normal. Like Halloween. Mom would give extra cookies to whomever carved the scariest jack-o-lantern and she'd never let a pumpkin with a smile grace the front step.

On Christmas Eve, it was Dad's turn.

They all gathered in the living room, spilling off the couch and lounging around each other on the floor and big puffy pillows. Mom would bring in the bowls of popcorn and Dad would follow her, sneaking handfuls out of the bowls. Most families would pull out thread and needles and start making popcorn garlands for their Christmas tree but Dad just pulled out _The Evil Dead_ with the world's biggest grin on his face. He wouldn't start the movie until everyone had a bowl of popcorn within arm's reach.

The first person to squeak or cover their face or act scared at all ended up getting pelted with popcorn, great big handfuls of it covered in salt and butter that left stains on t-shirts and jeans. It was _always_ Mom. And Dad always used it as an excuse to take her upstairs and change her clothes before they started _Evil Dead II_. That made Uncle Sam roll his eyes and pull out _Halo 5_ until Mom and Dad came back into the living room with cookies and milk and pizza and even more buttered popcorn with lots of salt.

She asked Dad once, right before they started watching _Army of Darkness_, if he ever saw anything that made him scared. His eyes had flickered at Uncle Sam, both of their jaws clenching like they were remembering the same exact thing, but Dad didn't say a word – just reached down and tried pulling her up onto his lap even though she was too old for it. Lia squeaked and the boys all pelted her with popcorn and she sat there glaring at Dad until he handed her a piece of pizza. She was _taller_ than Mom.

But not by much.

And she never got any taller.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_She missed them both with a pang she did not expect._

_It took time for Gwyneth to stop waiting for them. Wynfor wasn't going to return from a day's hunt and Griffin wouldn't sing his bawdy songs that made sense now that she was more woman than girl. Her days returned to normal, from two moons to three, but Gwyneth still took time to listen for the birds like they had taught her._

_She always kept her ears sharp for the sounds of men who would hurt her._

_As the seasons turned, the Kindly Ones continued to protect her because the only men to approach her since the brothers had returned to their journey did so on the same night they always returned to her. It was the third reunion since their evil stepmother had cursed them._

_Gwyneth had already finished sewing the third shirt and had started separating nettles for the fourth when the first of her brothers arrived, flying unerringly to the log where she sat and remembered other brothers. The swan had actually startled her, with its honking cry – trying to knock the nettles out of her lap harshly with a peck of its beak before it gave a piteous yell and Twm knelt before her._

_Gwyneth held him while the others arrived, stroking his hair and face with her roughened fingers – not even feeling the moisture on his cheeks until he looked up at her and begged her to stop. Each one of them did, holding her hands and asking her why, staring into her eyes and threatening to burn the nettles down so that she would have to stop._

_Only the tears in her own eyes, the scar she'd affixed into her lip with another quick bite, stayed their hands. But for one night, they convinced her to stop working the nettles, to set down her shuttle and stop her spinning wheel; they told her more stories about the things that they had seen, about how it felt to fly, what it meant to be trapped as swans and the despair of knowing they would forever be cursed._

_Sion gently plucked nettles out of her palms with a pair of tweezers Wynfor had left behind, anointing her palms with the last of the salve. Dinner was of their own making, a deer they had hunted and started to smoke so that Gwyneth would have meat when they were gone. She stayed up with them until, one by one, they flew back up into the sky._

_Gwyneth sighed as Deiniol changed, the last of them all._

_Not a day passed where she didn't miss her brothers, breathing along with their memories every second she was awake. Gwyneth marked her life in the days it took to complete each segment of her task and she always knew who would return first on that one night each year that they were a family again._

_And not a day passed where she didn't miss her protectors. She realized that they were still keeping watch over her; recognizing the signs of their visits even when they did not make their presence known._

_Wynfor would leave jars of salve near her cave when she least expected to find them and his smoked jerky became as familiar a presence as his gentle eyes as the years turned to cycles marked by an equinox. Gwyneth always missed her man who never asked her questions when there was a cooked meal left on a low-crackling fire or when she woke up to an empty cave after Griffin unexpectedly staggered into her nettle field with his lopsided smile._

_But most of all, Gwyneth wished that she could say Griffin's name whenever he shuddered inside of her._

__

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_He never used her name. _

_It was always 'little one' or 'my sweet Hermia' or some other diminutive that Rion pulled out of his ass, soft vowels that he caressed with a click of his tongue against the back of his perfect teeth. It didn't help that he always brought her to the beige room to interrogate her, with its dry spiders and rotten fruit underneath the shine. He walked in whenever a dizzy spell toppled her to the carpet, head throbbing because of the light streaming through the windows, and Rion laughed at her while she tried to stand. _

_Lia had no illusions. _

_She was a toy, a tiny doll with her mother's tangled hair and her father's freckles, and Rion was worse than a toddler when it came to playtime. She had seen what happened to those on the receiving end of his whims, the creatures that shuffled in the dim light of his oven-lined toy box. He was like the kid in that old Pixar movie that ripped off arms and stuck them in places where legs should go, giggling when his toys screamed because they couldn't walk._

_There were nights where Lia would wake up from the slow shudder creeping up her spine and find a pair of crimson eyes staring right into her own – so close she could smell the flowers decaying in the dust of his lungs, one finger leaving welts on her cheek where the nail slowly brushed flushing skin and left puffy traces of its passage in the morning. He would whisper to her, piercing past walls with a sibilant hiss filled with 'my petite gift' and 'little swan' and a host of promises about all of the things he would wish for once he cracked her open and drank deep from her heart. _

_When he left, she would roll on the floor until her shoulder bumped into the warmth that was Alexander Thomas Newbery. '_My name is Lia Winchester_,' she would whisper into the crook of his arm. '_I have six older brothers, more cousins than I can shake a stick at and parents who still kiss each other like teenagers_.' And if Alex was awake, she'd start talking about how much Dad loved his car or how everyone fought to be on Mom's team during touch football and how each brother took turns protecting her because that's what older brothers did. _

Alex listened to every story she would tell.

But there were repercussions to breaking the rules, especially the ones Lia did not understand; so many afternoons spent tumbling to the rough carpet in the beige room while Rion tempted her with wishes of her own. He promised to keep one wish to save her when his ritual was complete, when his son was restored to his proper place from the depths into which her father had cast him, but he grew impatient – smothering her with white spiders pinching her nose and pushing her down into the carpet.

"Does your heart belong to me, my wren?" Rion demanded, five welts on her throat from his long-fingered hand.

"No." Lia spat out the word. Hummingbird wings sped up every time he asked the question, slowing down long enough for the clipped 'no' that was always her reply. This was their new game, played out in so many different ways that she didn't remember the first time he asked her the question, but a Winchester would never give in to some asshole that ripped people apart for pleasure.

Crimson eyes flashed and Rion scowled, pushing himself into a stand by pressing down on her throat, and he chuckled when she gagged. "Are you quite certain?" He sat on the back of his heels, head cocked as he watched her. They could have been talking about books or poems, the way his fingers brushed loosely against his thighs.

"Yes."

There were rules that even he could not bend – wishes were things that needed to be hard won; they had no power without the heart's desire. Lia winced, waiting for the burst of temper that didn't come. Rion gave a dazzling smile and leaned down, placing both hands on either side of her head. His white hands tangled in her hair, lips brushing against hers with a dusty slide that tasted like week-old bananas, and he plucked out something when his tongue popped between her lips.

"You are a clever child," Rion said with another deep laugh, rusty breath sucking back inside of him as he pulled away, "But no girlish rhyme can protect you forever." He shook his head slowly, lights glinting off his hair and casting a red glow on her white gown. "Do your parents really kiss like teenagers?"

"My…_parents_?"

She closed her eyes, seeing only shadow figures with auras. A whole collection of fading faces scattering across the table like all the broken pieces of a puzzle. Tears welled in her eyes but she would not let them fall, holding on to the cackling laugh that rebounded through her skull and a pair of green eyes that narrowed – a man's fingers going white around the steering wheel of a big black car and a woman's laugh inside the largest oak tree in the back yard.

"It's a babbling rhyme," Rion returned. "I thank you for the amusement." He snapped his fingers and two guards, faces hidden behind white masks that matched the color of Rion's skin, each grabbed a shoulder. Her bare heels rubbed against the carpet as they lifted her up and dragged her out of the room.

They tossed her into the toy box and she blacked out when her head cracked against stone.

The cool water sinking past her lips hurt to swallow and she blinked, hands resting on denim-covered knees. Matthew's face was right in front of hers, a clucking noise in the back of his throat when the water came back up. "Lia can't even drink," he said, his child's eyes filling with tears of his own.

"The bastard actually _hurt_ her this time." Alex's voice was a rumble against her back and she recognized his arm around her. He was gently touching her neck with a cooled piece of cloth, dipped in a bowl of water. Matthew closed his eyes and curled around her leg but she trembled in spite of herself. "I'm so sorry, Lia," Alex whispered into the back of her neck.

"Lia?" she asked. Her hands tightened around his knees. The word hurt to say, pins pushing into her chest, but she had no idea what it meant. There was a hole where a world should be, a scattering of shadows where there should have been 'mother' and 'father' and memories of a place beyond a crematorium's oven-covered walls and the prettiest glimmer of all that ripped everything away as it toyed with them. "Is that my…" She shook her head sharply. "Do you…know my parents, Alex?"

"Oh, God…" Alex's arm let go and she toppled forward, stomach contracting but all that came out was a sulfur stench that made her muscles tense even harder than before. "Lia." He settled her back against his chest and holding her firmly in place with his arm. "Listen to me," he added. "Just close your eyes and listen to me."

Alex told her a story about a girl who sat on the stairs with her six older brothers, watching her mother read a magazine until a big black car roared into the driveway and her father stumbled into the foyer with her Uncle Sam. He told her stories until he was hoarse, about watching movies at Christmas and how her parents met over some fairy tale about a shapeshifting dog. The faces were still fuzzy but it was enough rope to hold onto, the rumble at her back reminding her of 'home' like nothing else did, and he gave her a talisman that Rion could never steal no matter how hard he tried.

She repeated the words every night before she went to sleep, over and over; her very own lullaby, sounded out in time to Matthew's breathing. Alex whispered the words right along with her, ignoring her clenched fists and hot tears because she always stumbled over the name; slowly repeating it for her until it came out of her mouth in chopped syllables.

_My name is Lia Winchester. I have six older brothers, more cousins than I can shake a stick at and parents who still kiss each other like teenagers._

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

He sang to her, old songs about shaking all night long or girls who were something good.

"You need to expand your repertoire," she said. "How do you expect to pick up chicks with Herman's Hermits?" Alex laughed and picked her up by the hips, dragging her up onto his thighs. "You jerk," she yelped. "Did it ever occur to you that I might not want to sit on your bony lap?" But her hands tangled up in his as Alex put his arms around her waist and she laid her head on his chest. "I was serious about the songs, though."

"You just need to remember more of them," Alex retorted.

"Me?"

"Apparently, your father's really into AC/DC and Zeppelin and Kansas – something you called the greatest hits of mullet rock – but your mom likes stuff from the sixties." He rested his chin on top of her head. "We never got around to your brothers before…" His voice trailed off, leaving an ache in her throat.

She closed her eyes. He was the storyteller and she was the story – a muse who only remembered glimmers of herself in the split seconds she walked between awake and asleep. It was enough to give Alex hope and his smile was worth it, how he beamed when she repeated her name without stumbling. It seemed like such a small thing, two little syllables that made him happy.

Such a small thing, until it was taken away completely.

"I'm not sure I can listen to the entire Led Zeppelin catalogue again, Alex," she retorted softly. Zeppelin made her fingers itch with the desire to pound asphalt and drive as far as they could, to feel the wind whipping through her hair as her hand fluttered out the open window in time to the music. "But that might just be the sound effects you're using for the guitar solos," she added with a grin.

He chuckled. "There's an old family favorite but I don't even think you'd _want_ to hear it." Alex tightened his arms. "It's a folk song."

She tilted her head up, bringing a hand up to his cheek. He'd spent so many hours trying to save her family that he rarely talked about his own and her throat ached all over again. "Will you sing it for me?"

He nodding, sucking in a breath. The way Alex's voice rumbled through her, husky in his chest while he sang about traveling forty days and forty nights through red blood to the knee, resonated in her bones. It shouldn't have made her feel safe, a song that marked the roads to Heaven and Hell and to an Elfland that was only fair in folk songs, but it did. She felt like she was six, wrapped in the smell of pizza and leather and a woman's laugh rang out warmly into the hot summery daze.

A pair of clunky boots thumped into view, followed by a swift kick that took a chunk out of the wall. Neither of them jumped but Alex stopped singing and they both looked up. It was one of Rion's guards.

"Big Man wants her," it said, grabbing her arm and pulling her to her bare feet.

At least it let her walk, jerking her forward when she glanced backwards at Alex. Usually she was dragged to the hidden door, toes trailing behind her in the wake of her hospital gown.

Rion was standing by the window, staring out at the skyline with his hair resting on the glass. She expected a bloody smear against the windows when he twitched, his eyes going wide into his smile as she trembled beside the guard. A dusty blast of dead flowers hit her square in the chest along with his crimson-tinged gaze but there was no way in hell she was going to fall down in front of him ever again.

"You are taking liberties with the boy," he said. Rion might have been asking her about the weather or the state of the roads and his jacket looked like he was plucked out of _Pride and Prejudice_. "Are you not aware that you are otherwise engaged?"

She said nothing, steeling her features when he frowned and the glamours he usually wrapped around himself fell just enough for her to see his sharp-edged cheekbones glimmering with crimson – and the jagged-edged tips of his spidery white fingers. "Have you nothing to say?" Rion added, his long fingers pulling his sleeves out from underneath the cuffs of his jacket.

"Engaged?"

"Does not your heart belong to me?"

"No."

"One day, it will," he whispered. The rabbit in her chest began running at the way his voice dipped, his eyes gone dark as he crossed the room.

Rion lifted her from the carpet but the touch of his mouth against hers was gentle. The room was filled with spices and he gave one gentle tug against her lower lip with his perfect teeth, prodding her lips open enough for his tongue to slip tenderly inside. He tasted like dreams and she melted against him, all want and longing as he lightly brushed his tongue against hers, until a storyteller's brown eyes and greasy blonde hair danced on the back of her eyelids and broke the spell.

_Alex._

Hands clamped around her shoulders as she pulled back, the taste of Rion seeping deep inside. She moaned as he sucked harder, pulling her tongue further into his mouth and teasing her with his teeth. Hands clenched at her sides and he groaned himself. "You are delicious, my sweet," he breathed. "I need more."

A tiny 'no' danced on the tip of her tongue but his jaw snapped, teeth cutting clear through the muscle as blood exploded against what was left of her taste buds. Someone was punching her in the eyes, fireworks making a dizzying display as the shock traveled down her jaw along with blood spilling down her throat.

And there was _chewing_, his mouth pressed close to her ear as she gagged and swallowed down a rusty tang.

He slammed his tongue back inside her mouth, staining his lips red, and bitter spit burned against the stump that remained. She was still choking on the blood and the burning track of his tongue as it smoldered against what was left of hers and her scream was consumed by his mouth, all dripping acid and lost promises.

"The next thing I eat will be your heart," he growled, pushing her backwards onto the floor.

She choked on the bloody saliva flushing into her throat, the tarnished aftertaste intermingling with the fiery remnant of her tongue. Rion's smile was delicate, wiping the edge of his mouth with a white handkerchief, and he knelt down – gently brushing the hair back from her face as she rolled to her side, stomach contracting; everything poured back out, burning its passage up her throat.

When they threw her back into her grainy green-lit prison, Alex was there to catch her. She couldn't protest when he picked her up in his arms, lolling like a rag doll on his lap after he sat down. Matthew brought a steaming cup full of something warm and spicy, something that cooled the burns in her mouth to a dull throb and she could think again; the missing part of her tongue was trying to form words all on its own. And the panic in the pit of her stomach grew worse, faces dimming as she struggled to see them.

Alex dipped a rag into his bowl of water and started wiping the blood tinting her lips, thin streams trailing down her chin from the pain of holding her mouth closed when it happened. One thumb brushed a tear from her cheek, a gesture so familiar and so alien that she felt hollow inside; desperate to remember why such a simple thing as compassion could hurt to recall.

"Your name is Lia Winchester," Alex whispered into her hair, voice thick and bubbly. "You have six older brothers, more cousins than you can shake a stick at and parents who still kiss each other like teenagers."

When she closed her eyes, there was a jumbled collection of smiles and freckles – of green eyes and sandy colored hair with tangles of curls – but she didn't know how long she could hold on.

Letting go seemed like the easiest thing in the world.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_Gwyneth completed the sixth shirt with enough time to prepare for the journey home. When she spied herself in the stream, bending down to wash her hair, Gwyneth saw a wildling thing – more spirit than human – staring back up at her between the ripples from the wind. Only her eyes were the same, peering out from her nut-brown face and her tangle of nut-brown curls._

_Even her clothes marked her as more creature than woman, culled together from the skins of animals that she received as gifts – some from the Kindly Ones and others at the hands of Griffin and Wynfor. It was more armor than clothing, with the fur intact to keep her warm in winter weather, but it would not protect her from the men wandering the woods. Men who glimpsed her for but a moment and looked away because she was a forest thing. A spirit to be avoided at all costs._

_But they became more daring as the moons cycled._

_On the day Gwyneth would begin her journey home, she was betrayed by footsteps walking through her nettle field – followed by a low whistle that sounded like a wren; Griffin's call._

_There were three of them standing, staring into the mouth of her cave, when Gwyneth emerged with her basket full of shirts and a welcoming smile on her face. They took that smile as a promise and ripped the basket from her hands, pushing her down on top of her nettle shirts and lifting her skirt. The first grunted and stopped pressing his hand down onto her mouth when he realized she wasn't going to scream but that didn't keep his hand from her throat when she fought him off with teeth and fingers._

_A pair of hazel eyes appeared over the third one's shoulder along with the point of a sword through his gut, watching with a throb as she bucked underneath her attacker; wrists pinned back into the nettle shirts. Gwyneth rolled into a stand, staring up at Griffin. His hand came forward, a thumb brushing a tear from underneath her eyes, and one word fell between them as she pulled her skirt back down._

_'Why?' Griffin demanded._

_Gwyneth looked away, down at the shirts. It was the only answer she could give. Why did she not cry out when she was attacked? Why did she spend years weaving shirts while her hands puffed into scars? Why did she live by herself, friend only to animals and the two of them?_

_Why was she punishing herself?_

_She knelt and started putting the shirts back into her basket, stopping only when Griffin tugged one from her hands. The nettles stung them both, drops of his blood all over the nettles and even on the ground when he ripped it so hard the right sleeve came off of the garment. Gwyneth glared at him, hands automatically going to the pouch at her belt where Gwyneth kept her sewing kit. She rocked back onto her heels and began tacking the sleeve onto the shirt, whip-stitching as quickly as she could._

_Griffin turned his back on her._

_It was Wynfor who knelt down next to her, picking up shirts while she continued to sew. 'We found her,' he said. And Gwyneth had heard enough of their story to know whom they had found. She knew enough of her own to recognize the description, to realize that the thing that had sundered their family had cursed hers. They shared the same foe, something she could never tell, and they had come to say goodbye._

_The way Griffin's shoulders shook, Gwyneth almost hoped that they had come to ask her to join them but she knew such a thing could never be._

_She was a wild thing covered in bruises and the space between her thighs burned with a fire no amount of water from her cool stream would quench. The girl she was would have run in shame, instead of stitching up a sleeve so that she could finish the task that she had started the night she gave up her voice. A proper woman would have cleaned herself off and gone to her kin for amends but they were flying the night skies, as wild as she was, and part of her wished she could grab Griffin's sleeve with a hand as fair as hers used to be._

_Gwyneth wanted to say his name, just once, before they left her._

_None of that mattered. The brothers were coming to the end of their long journey, going to kill the thing that hurt them all. Gwyneth would not stop them. But she had a task of her own to perform, a task that would end with nettles watered by her own tears, gathered by the sweat of her own hands and anointed with her own blood as she wove them in silence._

_Wishes were never granted for less._

_And she had more desire than most, sneaking after the brothers when Wynfor gave a sigh and followed Griffin back into the forest._

_Gwyneth was stealthy when the situation required, taught by her protectors to skirt shadows and trees when they both realized she would remain in the forest until she was ready to leave. Neither of them turned to look at her as she followed them, an untamed girl camouflaged by bark and her bare feet silent in the leaves that muffled her passage, and she fell asleep listening to them breathe from across a clearing._

_But the next morning, there was a tap on her arm and a flash of blue-green eyes above hers. Gwyneth closed her hand around a strip of beef jerky and waited for him to leave, the silence broken by Wynfor's whistle as he nudged his brother awake._

__

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_ He believed in the value of object lessons._

_ On those rare occasions that Rion showed himself below, his passage was marked by scuttling claws amidst dead silence. A cacophony of eyes watched him warily, waiting for the example to be picked from their numbers the same way he picked roses from the air and watched their petals fall. It was always the slow pulling apart, the slow skinning of sins, when those crimson eyes marked the unlucky recipient of his attentions._

_ When he stopped in front of where they sat, backs against the wall and seven creatures standing vigil in their semi-circle, she was unafraid. Rion had already taken her name, had already taken her voice, but he could not take the one thing from her that mattered. He was bound by rules, as much a slave to his bargains as his victims, and Alex was safe – kept as an honor price to seal the deal with Alex's father._

_ "You meddle," Rion said simply. Alex said nothing but her eyes widened when one long-fingered hand suddenly reached down and yanked Alex by the hair. "You have filled my sweet promise with lies. You have taught her to resist." Rion was twisting the hair so tightly, drops of blood started bubbling along Alex's hairline. "You have earned punishment, Alexander _Thomas_ Newbery – proscriptions and contracts notwithstanding."_

Alex jerked when Rion used his full name, body going as slack as a rag doll. He had tried to warn her, once, about the power of names; a lesson she had failed to learn despite the way Rion had plucked hers away with a kiss. Alex slumped like every bone in his body had turned to jello, lurching onto her shoulder, and his mouth worked silently – one thin string of drool dropping onto her lap, her hand automatically going to the bottom of her gown and wiping it gently.

It was her fault.

_You have filled my sweet promise with lies._

It was their ritual, his litany of her life. She could hear Alex's voice in her sleep, when Matthew wrapped around her for warmth and that midnight dark was a blessing; her name burned back into her brain with a vengeance as loud as the big black car that no Unseelie spell could silence, that roar in her dreams as it pulled into a driveway she could no longer reconstruct.

The dusty spider in Alex's hair twitched and then fluttered back to Rion's side. "The punishment shall pain me more than it pains you, Alex." It was a voice that could make angels weep but the sickly sweet smell grew worse. She could taste it, on the nubs that remained on the stub in her mouth. "I do not relish the idea of hurting my precious heart," he added, all reason and sadness despite the crimson gleam sheeting off of his wet hair.

"Nnnn…" Alex tried to sit up, his head cracking into her shoulder blade.

She kicked out when one of Rion's guards wrapped a meaty fist around her shoulder, a scissor kick around an ankle that didn't keep the thing from dragging her out into the middle of the room. All points of the floor met in the spot, dipping down into a drain that was stained with rust. A grating noise echoed through the room and she looked up, staring at the metallic glint that was coming down out of the ceiling.

She kicked again, a ragged noise erupting from her chest that wasn't even a scream, before something heavy thumped into the back of her head.

Her hands were bound when she awakened, two small claws locked wrist to wrist with a thick knot of rope that left welts when she moved. Toes brushed the smooth stone, the bare tips cold against the floor, as she swung slowly back and forth; nothing to get purchase against as she moved. A spray of goose bumps trailed down her arms, her thighs, as a rip pulled off the tatters of her hospital gown. Long-fingered hands tickled the backs of each knee as Rion knelt before her, hair going from crimson to a shock of thick black hair as his mouth dipped forward to kiss her on the abdomen.

"Don't fight me," he whispered, chuckling when she jerked against the rope. His hands squeezed on her knees, hard enough for her to push away from him – but it gave him enough leverage to force open her thighs, shoving them backwards with an ache. "You know you want this. You've always wanted this." One slick pass of his tongue on the crease where her thigh met her hips made her whimper, tiny burns erupting across the goose bumps, and the rabbit thumping away inside couldn't run.

The dimples in his smile made her muscles clench all over again and the shattered moan pouring out of her throat made his blue-green eyes go wild. He flipped her knees up over his shoulders and five bruises bloomed across each thigh as he held her down, restraining her while his burning tongue snaked between the folds – another round of burns as the acid flickered across her clit.

Another half-scream that made her wrench and rear away from his dimpled mouth.

"I always knew you were a slut," he said. A new voice, smug but so like the memory of how she used to sound. He was younger now, grinning up at her between her bruised thighs and using his teeth. "So fucking wet," he murmured. His eyes shimmered, more green than blue, and he jammed fingers up inside her cunt. "And so fucking tight. You've been holding out on us, little sister," he groaned, with a new shade of brown hair color and a shaky lilt to his voice.

He bit his way up her thigh, back to her abdomen, as her knees slid off his shoulders – stopping to lick off the blood on each wound as his hand worked, all five fingers pumping in and out with nails so sharp her eyes rolled up into her head. "Going to bang you," he grumbled against her stomach. "Can't fight me."

So many faces that should have been familiar until he found the one that made the scabs in her mouth pull apart when she shrieked, ankles kicking against his thighs as thick fingers held her hips – tongue fucking her mouth and licking each cut, shoving down her throat and brushing against the stump. His cock rammed inside of her and the rabbit was running on its wheel. "You going to come for Daddy?" he breathed into her neck, teeth making gouges and her heart was beating fast faster fastest, with its rhythm of not my daddy not my daddy not my daddy, but he smelled like shellac and he smelled like varnish and he thrust inside of her every time she pulled away with a ragged breath.

"You going to come all over Daddy's cock?" he added, her head going backwards when he rocked against her hips – nails ripping into her ass as he held her close, tearing across the backs of her thighs, and the pain pressed and something like a slow drum pounded through her belly and her hips started bucking because she couldn't push him out and, fuck, she was clamping around his cock with not my daddy not my daddy not my daddy and, oh god, why couldn't she push him _out_. He moaned, pulsing deep inside with a slick shot that ached.

"You going to give Daddy your heart, baby doll?" he asked, breath hot against her ear.

She lowered her head, semen sticky on her thighs as he throbbed inside of her. His freckles were exactly like her own, sprinkled in cinnamon and chocolate across his nose. All she could breathe was not my daddy not my daddy not my daddy and oh daddy it hurts. Another whimper as the rabbit beat itself to death against the sides of its cage.

Rion chuckled as his features shifted, pulling himself out of her with a scalding slide. The tips of his fingers were covered in her blood, matching the throbbing gashes in her legs. He licked his index finger and looked at her coolly. "Your body is already mine, my sweet Hermia."

And he left her hanging, a hunk of torso rotting on its hook.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Matthew was the one who cut her down with the help of a giant.

After one quick swipe of his claws against the rope, she was sprawled on the stone floor with her bound hands above her head. It took him longer to slice through the knots at her wrists, his tears dropping onto her palms when he sliced through skin and she didn't even flinch. He was too small to carry her and the giant did not want to feel the taint of Rion that still slithered in every pore so Matthew rolled her slowly across the floor until she was laying beside Alex.

She stared out at the sliver of rope still wrapped around the hook and closed her eyes, the stone floor cold against her cheek and leg. And every piece of her body ached. Head. Muscles. Fingers. Stomach. _Skin_. Everything burned where he had touched, tiny blisters from his tongue and scratches from his fingers, and her cunt was cracked open just like her heart was going to be.

_This is the story of a girl with six older brothers._

It snuck in between the welts and the bite marks – a woman's voice telling stories, a catalogue of creatures that breathed only in fairy tales. It even hurt to laugh, a harsh little chuckle that didn't require words. She had finally splintered into pieces, left for slag and cut down from a hook and using a children's story as a talisman against the green-grainy dark.

Something settled on top of her, light like a sheet, and her body was pulled backwards so that her head rested on a denim-covered lap. She could remember the girl's name. Gwyneth. _All luck and skinned knees._ A woman's smooth cadence recalled every moment of suffering, of six brothers and a silence Gwyneth would not break while she wove six shirts with bloody handfuls of nettle she gathered herself and watered with her own tears; one moment of grace given by the Kindly Ones themselves, bought by nothing less than total devotion.

But she didn't have a faerie godmother, just the woman's voice in her head as she started shivering.

_Wishes were never granted for less._

Matthew curled around her and she whimpered when prickles brushed against her bruised skin. The smell of varnish was thick in the back of her throat and the only thing keeping her from pushing out and running was one hand on her forehead, soothing her with a storyteller's voice. There was always water when she started throwing up and cool cloths on her forehead the longer she burned but she couldn't stay _warm_ and her fingers and toes curled from the cold.

She couldn't even hold up her head, eyes fluttering closed as she tried to stay conscious. She stopped counting every time Alex sucked in a breath, trapped in hummingbird wings and wincing as he lanced the festering cuts on her arms or the backs of her thighs, and she knew that she was sinking into the dark when Matthew's tears rained heavy in her hair as he begged her to wake up.

The cuts inside were never going to heal, scarred over because she couldn't dig the nettles out without cracking herself open – a wish she had earned with her own blood, sweat and tears. _The three trials_, the woman's voice whispered. _It's how heroes save their princesses._ But she couldn't ask Alex, who knew all of her stories, and his voice was begging something, someone, in a tear-stained sing-song promise.

Alex was giving her up and she was powerless; couldn't even raise a pinkie to fight for what they might have had and she wanted to scream when she heard the low laugh because she knew that Rion needed her alive or the magic would be lost, wouldn't let her die because wishes needed to be given freely once they were earned. Wishes relied on the heart's desire and a heart without its beat had no desire at all. It was just a dead rabbit in a rib cage, ready for skinning and nothing but meat.

A hunk of torso rotting on its hook.

Rough hands grabbed her arms and her toes were dragging behind her again, head lolling forward, until something bitter was forced down her throat and she opened her eyes. She was back in the beige room, being held up as Rion stared down at her with his hands folded across his chest. She focused on his mouth, watched his perfect white teeth gleam as he smiled.

"Your champion has requested a boon, little one." He was leaning back against his black desk, stars blinking outside his window, and one eyebrow rose wryly when he shook his head. "He will give you up." Rion chuckled. "As if he had any prior claim upon you."

She tried to clench her fists but she couldn't even work her fingers. There'd be no one to sing her to sleep at night, no one to remind her of names that she could no longer tie to faces. His gentle hands had tended her wounds, had kept that brief spark of hope alive, and now they were both being punished for it. Alex was just another thing Rion could take from his sweet Hermia until she gave in, his smile the thing that ate worlds while he watched her.

"Does your heart belong to me," Rion asked softly.

_No._

But she nodded, eyes going dim as Rion smiled. She had a job to do, a job that would end with nettles watered by her own tears, gathered by the sweat of her own hands and anointed with her own blood as she wove them in silence.

Her heart was all she had left.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_Gwyneth followed the brothers for a week, falling asleep to the whistle of Wynfor's breathing and Griffin's long paces around their fire; hidden underneath whatever pile of scrub she found when they stopped for the night. The rain covered the sound of her tears but it could not block the memories of faces that took their pleasure from her and had left nothing but slag in their wake._

_But she had a task to perform._

_The weather turned the day they crossed the border into her father's lands, the clouds hiding the sun from the fields, but those who tended the farms still completed their work. Gwyneth stayed within the trees, skirting the road, but the brothers walked right through the front gates along with those attending the festival – heads held high, weapons hidden under cloaks and clothing._

_Power was gathering in the earth, tingling up through her feet as Gwyneth walked the perimeter of the white walls. She placed one rough hand on the stone when she found the opening her brothers had made when they were children and wanted to sneak out into the night to curl up in the roots of the oak tree without their father ever knowing._

_Gwnyeth was still small enough to use it, pushing the basket through first._

_There was a guard nearby, dozing against the wall. The guard stirred when Gwyneth's foot brushed the grass on the other side of the crack but he did not wake. She had spent so many years in silence that she did not realize how noisy her old home had been and Gwyneth used the clamor to mask her steps to the courtyard._

_It was full of pavilions and tents, a cacophony of colors that lined the inner walls. Merchants hocked their wares and more food than one could possibly hope to eat – pasties and pies and something that looked like tubers – were available alongside silks and jewelry and furniture for purchase. No one noticed her as she passed behind them, with her tangle of curls and hands that would never be clean; not one person glanced at her basket._

_Gwyneth was a ghost compared to the woman who had taken her place._

_Her stepmother was the jewel in her father's crown, sitting next to him on a dais while a tourney played out before them. Even with storm clouds rolling overhead, Aeronwyn's hair shone like copper. There was a little girl sitting next to her, with hair like Gwyneth's father and an expression that could cause a grown woman to pause in her tracks and stare._

_Gwyneth's father was a shrunken shadow of himself, sitting next to his wife; sapped dry of any power he once possessed._

_Aeronwen rose to her feet, a smile on her face as she raised her hands for silence, but a coil of clouds erupted above her. Six white shapes, trumpeting their arrival with defiant cries, emerged from the wispy funnel. She shrieked in return, her fingers curling into claws with sparks of fire surrounding her hands, and the scream Gwyneth would never voice was taken up by a roar as two figures rushed forward with swords held high._

_She had never seen them fight – as much beauty and grace as it was the art of the sword – but they were dodging her stepmother's spells while her brothers circled overhead. As much as she loved her man and his gentle-eyed brother, her task was all-consuming._

_It was her purpose, the reason why Gwyneth was made._

_The crowd parted for her, a tangle-haired forest creature carrying a basket. One hand grabbed a shirt, the nettles burrowing past the scars, and Gwyneth sighted the nearest swan. The air around her stepmother crackled, singing feathers as her brothers worked to protect Griffin and Wynfor from Aeronwen's blows, but there were rules to the enchantment – proscriptions that Gwyneth was required to follow or else her brothers would die._

_It was her only chance._

_Gwyneth threw the shirt into the air. Her stepmother screamed as a white figure dove into its opening, wings turning to arms as one brother alighted on the ground. It was Twm, who no longer looked like her twin – all shining where she was dark, matted with leaves and covered in old scars. But the magic was pouring through her, and four more shirts flew up into the sky like arrows pursuing their targets._

_Five brothers restored to fight the creature that had stolen so many lives, grabbing weapons to stem the tide of guards pouring forth to protect the witch while Wynfor and Griffin concentrated on Aeronwyn._

_All semblance of illusion had disappeared and her stepmother's hands flashed like white spiders in the lightning that shot from her fingers. Gwyneth hurled the last shirt just as a blast of heat knocked Wynfor backward, a spell flung towards the man who made her salve._

_'Wynfor,' she cried as Deiniol flew into the shirt. Her brother's right wing burst through the sleeve, and it plummeted to the ground before her brother fully transformed. Deiniol plummeted to the ground soon after, bouncing before her and rolling against the grass with a sharp crack. Gwyneth's chest cracked open with it when she spied her brother's wing, broken and hanging limp off of his shoulder like dead weight._

_She didn't even see the end of the battle, wrapping herself around Deiniol's shaking form while the magic inside of her sunk back into the earth, but Gwyneth heard the bansidhe's dying cry followed by her brothers' shouts._

_When the shouts dimmed to gasps, Gwyneth was still kneeling around Deiniol as she shielded the swan's wing from harm while the rest of him rocked in her arms. She looked up to find Griffin, staring down at her with eyes as wild as the blood rushing inside of her. The same question between them but part of the answer was in her arms._

_'My brothers,' Gwyneth said. 'It was for my brothers.'_

_It was Griffin's turn for silence, one of her roughened hands brushing Deiniol's face. Her voice was icy water pouring over the rocks in her stream, crackling as it bubbled out of her throat._

_The nettle shirt was rough against her arms and they were all covered in a new round of blood and bruises, new scars on top of the old. Gwyneth held on all the same, leaning into Deiniol's shoulder when his arm twisted tight around her waist. Griffin watched them until Wynfor put a hand on his arm and they turned to assist her brothers with the aftermath of the battle._

_A wish, no matter how nobly won, does not always come true in the manner intended._

__

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_Every morning she was polished like a jewel._

_Her bruises were softened with a mint salve and her cuts caressed by something that smelled like olive oil and crushed herbs. Rion washed her hair himself, white fingers a gentle massage against her scalp, and twirled each curl around his fingers until they fell soft and shining around her shoulders. It was longer than she'd ever worn it, another inch every time the hummingbird whirred. He even gave her a dress, all white gauze and shimmering layers that laced tightly up the front._

_She endured his touch the same way she endured his arrogance. It wouldn't last long. Rion had given her forty days and forty nights, just the length of time it took to ride the roads to the Twilight Lands through a river of blood, to prepare herself for the ritual. _Your shrivening_, he had had called it. _As though you are a knight of old preparing for your vows_._

The trick required sacrifices or the three trials meant nothing.

Rion even gave her the semblance of freedom and a room set off from his apartments. He continued taking pleasure from her pain every time he shifted into the face of someone who should have been a stranger; slivers that sliced through her chest like the wishing bowl. The trick required that, too – a trust gained by her submission. She wore a ring that marked her as his and it let her pass beyond most of the wards but she rarely left her room. He would tease her about that over dinner, crushed fruits and sweet wines that curdled in her mouth, and she made herself smile so that he would believe that she was his.

He never returned the three things he had stolen.

The ritual did not require them. It did not require her purity, merely that her heart was whole and the bowl was given freely once its spilling edge cracked through her chest. Wishes required no less than complete submission.

She didn't know if she would be able to go through with it.

But every time he pushed between her thighs with a pounding that throbbed, it was easier to put together the words. _Every thing you have stolen and every agreement that you have sealed with someone else's misery shall become your burden and no one else's; you will be the only one to pay the price for your bargains._ She spelled them out on the back of her eyelids, sweating underneath Rion's clammy white skin while she bit her lip and memorized them until she spoke them aloud in her dreams.

Even the wish could not fill the constant ache when she was alone – Alexander Thomas Newbery was the one name she would never forget and she should have let him go but it was the final midnight.

She invoked the charm upon the ring with a careful twist, slipping out the door and down the stairs that led to Hell. The guards did not even see her, a phantom in her white dress and loosely curled hair sneaking through shadows and gliding through a crack into the greenish gloom.

He was laying on the stone floor with his face towards the wall. Even Matthew was giving him a wide berth, hunched in on himself in the farthest corner of the room. She swallowed and picked her way across the floor, the hem of her dress brushing against stone and claws and furry limbs until she was kneeling beside him. His breathing was ragged and he started when she touched his bare shoulder; if he were sitting, she would have been crawling onto his lap before he could blink.

Stretching down, she swept her mouth against the pulse beating in his neck – fighting the instinct to flick the tongue that was no longer there, tasting what she could of Alex. His jeans were ragged and his hair was greasier than she remembered but she trembled all the same when his fingers gathered in her curls and he breathed deep off the curve of her neck.

"The guards said…it's happening tomorrow." It was a whisper. "Is that true? She pulled away from him long enough to nod before drawing one hand down his cheek. Alex put his hand on top of hers, eyes darkening as he frowned. "Jesus, Lia." He scrambled into a sitting position.

She crawled up into his lap, not even caring about the dress, and tilted up her head. She wanted to kiss him long and slow and sweet but she was afraid of the way the stump in her mouth would taste – all clotted blood and burned flesh even though it was forty days later; she settled for pulling his free hand up to her mouth and running her lips across it, resting her head on his chest.

"He's got you dressed up like a goddamn doll," he said. Her breath came out in a huff, the closest to a laugh she could muster, and she shifted to straddle his thighs.

_You going to give Daddy your heart, baby doll?_

It made her shake, the pressure bulging up from the fly of his jeans; the rabbit screamed not my daddy not my daddy not my daddy but it was Alex and it was the last midnight and he didn't smell like old varnish or dry dusty flowers full of rotting bananas. He was sweat and songs and the only regret she'd have when she was gone.

"You don't have to do this," Alex said softly when she suddenly looked away. "He still uses you, doesn't he?"

She swallowed. She had stopped fighting after the first time because the trick required her to feed Rion's ego or the rest of it didn't matter. Alex twisted her face to look back at his with a hand on her chin, mouth coming towards hers. She shook her head before she pushed him slowly backwards, hands on his shoulders, until he was lying on the floor. She leaned into his hands, trembling as he started unhooking the laces on her dress. He moaned when she worked the button loose on his jeans; stopping only to let him pull the dress up over her head.

The room was an orchestra of moans and sighs, the green light going dim, but she could still make out his features; every line of his face, the way his mouth quirked up when she brushed herself along the length of him and the catch in his throat when he thumbed the peaks of her breasts. The groans they both made when he took a nipple between his lips made her back arch and the girl she was might have been ashamed if it were anything but the last midnight.

That girl just lay down with a sigh when he rolled her onto her back and slipped a hand between her thighs. His murmured 'shh' didn't keep her from jerking as she waited for the low chuckle and the shift into a face that made her heart bleed but his breath gave Alex away as she started rolling against his hand; loose-limbed slow shudders poured through her when he replaced hands with lips and it was the one time she wasn't afraid of letting go with anyone, bathed in a green gold glow and feeling the tips of her fingers brush against the cool stone as her pulse went warm against his mouth.

There was nothing but _Alex_ when he slipped inside her, thrusting fast and slow and his hands kept her from falling while his tongue traced the tracks of old scars. He was bending against her like a bow and his pulse fluttered inside of her with a soft 'I'll never forget you' that made her scratch his back until she knew why Gwyneth's wish was to say one name and her body fluttered back until a slow sleepiness drew her deeper into the dark of the last midnight.

Rion's sharp cough awakened them both at the same time, wrapped around each other like Hermia and Lysander in a patch of light more gold than green. Only the tic in a white cheek marked her betrayal, the clench of a jaw that spurred her to reach up and kiss Alex on the shoulder – her eyes closing to hide the tears when his whispered 'Lia' cracked louder than a metal gauntlet being slapped across Rion's face.

"Her heart is still mine," Rion said within the stillness that followed, smiling when she smiled back at him.

It was true. She was going to give Rion everything bottled up inside, every drop of the one wish that he'd never expect. Guards pulled her to a stand, roughly slipping her discarded white dress onto her body with no care for her cuts and bruises, and dragged her away. She looked at Alex once, over her shoulder as her toes slid across the cool stone, and hoped that he would always remember her name.

She was ready.

Shriven.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

It was going to end with a whimper.

The guard led her to a small room with black walls, a blood-stained altar and a white marble floor. The gleaming bowl, as white as the floor, was set on top of the altar. It sparkled, looking just like every white porcelain bowl her cousin had bought from a pottery booth at the Renaissance festival – except for the sharp spike that was inset at a cardinal point along its lip. The spike was concave and Rion laughed when she touched it reverently with her fingers. "It is shaped to catch the blood," he explained. "The more blood it captures, the more powerful the wish."

It worked for her.

She understood the particulars – he'd spent forty days explaining what would be required – but the wishing bowl made her stomach muscles clench. It was lovingly crafted by Rion's own hand to pierce her heart and capture every wish inside. Blood was the catalyst, a miracle that could be swallowed, and all she was to him in the end was a bowl full of wishes.

"It is time, little one," he said.

She swallowed, feeling like a idiot in her pretty white dress with her pretty curled hair, but her feet were as bare as a penitent and each step towards the altar was a careful one – a slow exhalation of breath as she touched her heel down upon the white marble. She couldn't see a difference between the color of her skin as her toes spread and the floor itself and that probably should have scared her, that she was as gleaming and cool as the floor and the bowl she would catch herself in, but she continued walking until she stood in front of the altar.

The bowl was warm in her hands, a tiny flutter against her fingers as she grasped it. All that was left was to slide the spike into her chest and wait until the bowl overflowed with her heart.

It was what she had left.

She centered the spike right under the edge of her heart. Rion's crimson eyes turned hungry, his tongue flicking against his lips through teeth as white as the bowl and her marble-like hands against its fluted edge. She couldn't tell where she left off and the bowl began when she sucked in a breath and pushed.

_There was a price for every miracle._

The spike cracked her open like she was nothing but vapor and a delicate smile crept over his face as he watched the blood spilling into the wishing bowl. The girl he'd stolen everything from was giving her heart for him.

But her heart was her mother's heart, and her mother's mother's heart; a slow pulse full of green eyes and identical smiles, of girls full of luck with six older brothers and curly nut-brown hair.

It was more than that, swirling between her hands.

The bowl was filling up with scuffed boots and a big black car that roared into the driveway, the patter of bare feet rushing across the carpet in the foyer when the door opened and Daddy stepped inside, being pulled into his arms while Uncle Sammy laughed. There were jack-o-lanterns and the way she felt every time Mom stood in front of her class and made that dumb joke about how old cells could be retrained to perform new tricks and bedtime stories, _knowing_ Gwyneth was as much Mommy as she was a girl in a fairy tale. It was full to the brim with touch football in the backyard and fighting to make mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving and eating as much junk food as they could during the _Evil Dead_ movie marathon every Christmas Eve, bowls of buttery popcorn and Aunt Sarah's gooey brownies.

The bowl was overflowing with _Lia_, a collection of ever-changing stories passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter and every single one said the same thing – that, sometimes, the princess scrapes herself up off the asphalt and saves her own ass with her blood, her sweat and her tears; the three trials that every hero endured to claim the prize.

It was always _her_ wish and, while the rules stated that she could _give_ it away, wishes could never be forced.

Lia turned the blood in the bowl clockwise with her finger. _Once for my grandmother_, her hair covered by a bandanna and tired eyes smiling through the tears that no amount of pain medication could mask. _Once for my mother_, another clockwise circle full of a girl who danced in sweaty back rooms overflowing with sin and sorrow and suffering. _And once for me_, her blood swirling into its third circle as her heart pumped itself out onto the bright red stain spreading across her breast.

"You _dare_," Rion hissed, body jerking like he was trying to move and was rooted to the floor. "Do not taunt me, my sweet Hermia." All of his glamour was stripped away and he was nothing more than a dry dusty corpse staring at Lia Winchester with a sharp-eyed stare that hurt more than the spike still lodged between two of her ribs. His crimson eyes narrowed. "Do not cross me. I will _kill_ the bard."

But they both knew he was lying. She had invoked the rules by remembering a bedtime story, looking hard enough to find the truth.

The room rang like a bell as Lia pulled the spike from her chest with a gentle smile. She raised the bowl to her lips and drank deep; it tasted nothing like the bitter tang that ran across her tattered tongue when her voice was stolen. The bowl fell from her loose fingers and it smashed to the ground, blood running in black rivulets along the cracks on the marble floor.

She took a deep breath and blew out the candles.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_And they all lived happily ever after._

__

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_ Her back arched with a heaving breath, eyes blinking open, and she coughed around the plastic tube that had been slipped down her throat. The only sound in the room was someone weeping until Lia's back slammed into the mattress, followed by the steady beat of the machine tracking her heartbeat._

_One-two-three-four._

__

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_ The light hurt every time she cracked open her eyes, too bright stabs bleeding past the breaks through her eyelashes whenever she recognized a voice or a shape in the glimmer. The pulse of the machines kept time to her heartbeat but every noise jarred – the hard clicking of pens fighting with the soft sounds of murmured breathing or the shift of fabric against fabric as a body moved in the chair next to her bed._

_The first face Lia pulled out of its fluorescent nimbus was her mother's, curled up in the chair next to her bed with a magazine on her lap. Mom held her hand, thumb slowly stroking against Lia's palm, but their eyes met when Lia stirred. She tried to smile past her mother's searching gaze, wincing as the magazine rustled to the floor. Mom leaned forward and touched Lia's cheek, heedless of her bandages and careful of the tubes._

_The dry spiders scrabbling through her rib cage stopped singing, chasing a slow smile that screamed in her dreams, but every secret Lia tried to hide was laid bare all the same; her mother's eyes, so much greener than the light in Rion's dungeon, recognized the hummingbird wings beating through Lia's veins. _

_Mom's sad smile stayed with her until she drifted into a dreamless sleep. _

_ _Your mother broke them entirely, with the help of a trickster and more than a little luck. It was a fool's bargain._ _

A snore burst through the sibilant tongue burning between her thighs, her cry cut short by wooden legs slamming onto the floor as Dad's chair balanced abruptly underneath him. His eyes were wild, throbbing above new scrapes and his bruised left cheek, and he tensed – ready to fight whatever monsters danced through her dreams.

Lia raised her hand, touching his lips. Every piece of her still hurt, brought back to the moment the truck slammed her into the road, but she held the touch as long as she could before her hand fluttered back onto the bed.

Not once did he press her about what she'd seen, though she saw questions in the clenched fists on her bedspread. Lia had questions, too; ones she would never ask her father no matter how often they teased her in dreams – fragments all but forgotten the longer she stayed awake.

_Did you never ask what he did, all those times he returned in the middle of the night with new cuts and bruises?_

Lizzie was there, once, when Lia woke up – curled around her on the bed despite the tubes and wires, breathing slow and easy just like Matthew did when he slept. Lia swallowed. She remembered the sound of his breath and the press of his legs around her side, the way one claw would trace the length of her nose with a touch so light, Lia wondered why she was ever scared of him. The prettiest skins hid cankers underneath their smiles and the darkest boasted gentle hearts.

_I used to be like you._

Alex was a phantom ache, soft edges that hurt no matter how gently his fingers brushed across her abdomen – just a bowl of water and ripped tatters of his t-shirt soothing the wounds Rion had left behind. His voice was always there, telling her stories, but it was Uncle Sam sitting in the chair next to her bed. He was reading out loud to her from her battered copy of _Alice in Wonderland_, his calm voice dancing around Cheshire Cats and playing cards.

"Hey," she said. It wasn't the voice she remembered, a hot fissure full of lava that cracked and warbled up from her lungs with a wheeze, but her tongue flicked across the back of her teeth – no longer a bloody stump within her mouth, a burning dead weight.

"Lia!" Uncle Sam's index finger pressed into the book as it closed around his hand. He was already standing. "I'm going to get your pa – "

"No!" She lifted her head up off the pillow, sweat beading across her forehead. "I need…" A straw was pressed to her lips before she could think and Lia sipped slowly while Uncle Sam's brow furrowed and blue-green eyes shimmered. It even hurt to push the cup away when she was done. "I need to know something."

"But your parents…"

He thought she was asking about herself, the broken thing laying in a hospital bed that used to be Lia Winchester – a myriad of questions spilling out between them. How badly was she hurt? Would she ever get out of bed again or be able to hold a fork on her own so that she could feed herself? Lia tried to breathe but she managed to grab hold of Uncle Sam's wrist, fingers working just enough to cup around the curve of his cuff.

All those questions to ask and never the important one.

"Did…" Lia licked her lower lip, thirsty all over again. "Did Dad ever kill a pouka?"

He sat back down in the chair, the weight of him bearing down with a snap. "Lia…" Uncle Sam looked down at the hand on his sleeve, wrapping his fingers through hers as he shifted the chair closer to the bed. "How did you find that out?"

She sucked in a breath, his fingers warm against her skin. "_Rion_." Lia tried to squeeze, her hand trembling in his like a dying bird. "He took me, Uncle Sam. A dying daughter for a murdered son." The tears came, the ones she refused to shed because they meant she'd been beaten, even if she'd escaped from the box where he kept all of his toys. "He took me…away. He left a changeling here to die." There was nowhere to hide from her uncle's blue-green stare while words tumbled out of her mouth like frogs. "Because Dad killed his son. So…"

"You wanted to know if it was true?" he asked. Uncle Sam always had a way of looking right into her heart and, after Rion, that should have bothered her. All that remained of her heart was a fragment of crimson hair falling like a stone through her fingers while she slept; nails leaving welts that puffed on her thighs and her arms, rotting inside just from his touch.

But Uncle Sam had never punched through her like she was full of cotton candy.

"There was a pouka murdering girls at the University of Illinois campus a long time ago. The police thought it was a serial killer. I thought it was a werewolf until the moon changed and the killings didn't stop." Lia's hand jerked. Uncle Sam made it sound so real, like it wasn't crazy. "Penny was walking home from the lab by herself when we were scouting the campus and Dean followed her."

"He said he met Mom because of a pouka but I thought Dad was just making fun of Mom's stories." Lia sighed. "That he made an ass of himself teasing her about it and she got pissed. Dad always gets horny when Mom gets pissed." Uncle Sam didn't say anything. "But you were both gone so much when we were growing up and it made sense after Rion told me…about his son. You fight the Unseelie."

"Not just the Unseelie," her uncle replied. She'd always known that Winchesters didn't do things by halves but even Lia was surprised by what he said next. "We've been doing a fair share of hunting trying to figure out what was wrong with you after Penny had a friend at the lab review your charts." There was a whole list of things they'd done bristling in his eyes but he caught himself all the same. "Rion…" Uncle Sam paled and Lia saw bruises as fresh as her father's around his wrist. "That pouka Dean killed was an Unseelie prince? We never thought…" He shook his head sharply, teeth biting into his lip. "This Rion? Did he call you an eraic?"

"Eraic?"

"A blood price."

"He was going to use me to bring his son back." It was the kindest way of putting it, the cracking of her heart – a bowl full of wishes that Rion had tried to steal. Uncle Sam finally let go of her hand and it flopped in the air while the nerves jumbled in her brain; just so many twitches that never stopped.

"That son of a bitch is as good as dead."

"No…" Lia closed her eyes. "That's not why I asked, Uncle Sam. Don't tell Dad," she whispered. "_Please_." And she wasn't about to tell him that Rion was worse than dead, the final eraic for every person he had ever hurt etched into his dusty flesh and pulled like pins out of his crimson eyes. She heaved her hand onto the bed, feeling the warmth of the cotton against her sweat-covered palm. "I just needed to know if it was true. Because…"

She swallowed again, a sluggish eddy of air swirling around her when the mattress dipped and she was sitting up and some man had an arm around her. He smelled like sweet spices, falling into crimson sighs bitten against her neck, and he wasn't _Alex_. Lia jerked, tried to fumble away but she was too weak to move and she was trapped in another one of _his_ illusions with wires and tubes pouring out of her arms and legs, spilling her heart open and letting everyone drink.

Her body still wasn't her own but her brain remembered and suddenly it was just Uncle Sam holding her while she bawled into his shoulder. "Because," Lia managed between sobs. "Because if it's true, then…" She lifted her head from his shoulder.

"Then what, Lia?"

"Because then it's all true. About Grandpa John." His eyes widened and he recoiled like she'd slapped him. "I have to believe that it's true, Uncle Sam. That Winchesters are strong enough to claw their way out of Hell." Her body still wasn't her own, trembling as his smell seeped into her pores, and all she wanted to do was scream – to cut away every part of herself that had been violated but she couldn't even hold the knife.

"It's all true," Uncle Sam whispered into her hair. "Every single word."

Her body still wasn't her own.

But, someday, it would be.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_There is more to the story that women tell._

_No one blamed Gwyneth for Deiniol's partial transformation, the one swan's wing that marked him as a creature between both worlds, although she would carry the guilt of her mistake for the rest of her life. Her virtue was restored by the Kindly One's themselves, her years as a wildling forgotten the moment Gwyneth restored her brothers and two brave men killed the Dark One's daughter._

_Gwyneth missed her forest – the call of the birds, the sound of the stream – but with her brothers free and her protectors proclaimed good men in her father's service, there was not much for her to do but clear out her mother's herb garden and begin preparing it for planting._

_The magic had not been hers, in the end, but returning to her old life after being touched by a myth was a line difficult to cross. Five of her brothers managed easily enough, returning to the lives they had before their curse. Deiniol lived in solitude, ashamed of the wing; still trapped in the story. She had always thought that Wynfor would trade in sword and spell for a judge's mark once their task was done but he chose, along with Griffin, a life guarding those who stumbled into the dark._

_Since they would not accept positions within his household as a reward, her father declared a holiday and held a feast in their honor._

_Griffin found her sitting on a log in her mother's herb garden, rough hands in her empty lap. He never asked the question but Gwyneth answered it all the same when he picked up her hand and brought his lips down to her scarred palm. They lay down together under the stars, with nothing but air between them. Every brush of his hands across her flesh was gentle, and she shuddered wherever his cool fingers touched. He never flinched from the press of her coarse hands, arching into them as she scratched down his back, crying out his name during the push and pull that was their gift alone._

_There was enough magic left for him to stare at her awestruck, followed by a sly smile. Griffin began dragging his name out of her with well-placed kisses and fingers that marked his territory, making up for every word she could not speak in so many long years._

_The next morning, the brothers left – but not before Griffin spoke to her father about building a house in a forest clearing full of nettles. Her brothers wanted to prepare the land for building themselves but Gwyneth was undeterred. The hard work kept her occupied, building the house where they would live – big enough for six boys with Griffin's hair and a green-eyed daughter that Wynfor would take under his wing._

_Unlike the endings that men give, every day was not happy – between the waiting and the worry – but every day was their own._

__

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

_ It was the beginning of August before Lia realized that she had missed the Fourth of July. _

_ Maybe it was because fireworks would never be the same again after seeing them bloom behind her eyelids when her tongue was ripped out, of feeling those fingers shudder down tracks of veins and piercing them just enough to maim. Nothing shimmered around her like the dreams. She didn't mention them to anyone, the ones marked by a slick smile she had stopped remembering when she was awake – just like she never told her father that she knew his secret. _

_ She was beginning to forget. _

_ Uncle Sam had warned her about that the afternoon the truth tumbled out but that never protected her from what crept back into her nightmares. Uncle Patrick told her she would remember in time, that her mind was just blocking out the trauma of the accident, and he slipped Dad the name of someone he thought could help. Dad had scowled but he took Lia to her weekly appointment with Dr. Offerdahl as faithfully as he took Lia to every physical therapy session._

_ She still remembered _him_, when the sharp edges pushed and the brush of air prickling the hair on her arms ached. Lia marked her afternoons with the catalogue of every one-sided conversation but the last thing she ever wanted was for Alexander Thomas Newbery to see the broken girl stuck in her wheelchair. She wasn't even able to wipe her own ass because she couldn't stand up by herself._

But stories have a way of winding towards their inevitable conclusion and Lia wasn't surprised when Dad announced that they were having a family reunion in the backyard. Mom smiled at Dad after he said it, her fingers touching the scar at the corner of his mouth; Dad smiled back when she said they'd earned another perfect day and Jacob groaned because their parents were six seconds away from making out in the middle of breakfast.

Lia wasn't looking forward to it.

Before the accident, she would have been part of the tangle of activity in the backyard; whirring from the party tent to the picnic tables to the kitchen, where she always made punch with ice cream and no one messed with her decorations. The moving truck had relegated her to a shady spot on the path near the oak tree. Lizzie sat on a blanket next to her, reading _A Wrinkle in Time_ out loud, before a parade of uncles with concerned eyes and aunts who breathed their worry converged on them.

Her cousins did their best not to look at the puppet with her cut strings before her brothers brought her potato salad and Uncle Joe's ribs and enough lemonade to raise the Titanic. Johnny pulled her out of the wheelchair and onto the blanket with them like there was nothing wrong with her at all, like her legs still worked and they were just sitting around drinking beer after touch football and she could exhale.

"Is there room for me?"

It was a New York accent.

She looked up, telling herself that the shock was just the sun shining off of his clean hair, and shaded her eyes. Alex was taller than she remembered and she couldn't even pick herself up off the goddamn blanket, watching a white spider crawling against a black desk while Lake Michigan glittered over a pin-striped shoulder and she shrank even smaller under a crimson-eyed stare.

Alex had a guitar slung over his back that he set in her wheelchair before sinking down next to her on the blanket, in a shady spot that seemed to be waiting just for him. Samuel made a gagging noise when Lia's hand stayed on Alex's cheek, making a crack about how she was just like Mom, but Uncle Tommy snorted and said that it was time to play football. Uncle Daniel was even blowing a whistle to get everyone's attention before the family started choosing sides.

They were alone.

"You do clean up nice," he said. "And the not puking is a definite plus."

Lia finally moved her hand back down to her lap. "How…" she began to ask, with a shake of her head. Her hands twitched in her lap, the words stopped up in her throat.

"How did I find you?" Alex grinned at her. "There's only one Dr. Winchester in the Chicago branch of Rice Laboratories."

"No…" She shivered. He smelled like the best part of a dream she had when she was ten but he scared her all the same. What little she still remembered was enough to wake her up with screams, like that time she had the nightmare about the Virgin Mary picture over her friend Maria's bed coming to life with a snarled face and a claw. "How did you convince my dad to let you in the backyard?"

"I convinced your mom." His voice was light. "I… I have an internship starting this fall at Rice Labs." Alex was blushing. "Not on her project," he added when Lia's eyes widened. "But I made myself talk to her when I came out last month for my second interview. I told her that I met you when you were on a trip and she thought I was talking about some trip to Europe you went on two years ago with your French club. I simply chose not to correct her assumptions after she invited me."

"I don't believe this. You're a stalker!" She leaned forward, one hand fisted in the blanket. Her arms were too weak to pull herself up into his lap and it didn't help that Alex was watching her like she was crazy. "A little help here would be nice."

"It'd be easier if I knew what you were doing."

"I'm trying to kiss you but my skinny arms are weak as hell and my chicken legs don't work at all and I figured it be easier to kiss you if I was sitting on your bony thighs."

Alex's hands settled around her hips. She'd stopped flinching when it was Mom or Dad touching her there but it was Alex and Lia didn't even feel panic quiver in her chest when his hands dragged her up onto his lap. "Better?" he asked.

"Yes."

He sighed when Lia looped her hands around his neck, resting her head on his shoulder. "That night…" Alex's voice trailed off as her hands trembled, fingers clutching his hair. "You were saying goodbye."

"I… I think so." All that remained of that night was the soft flush of his fingers around her shoulders, the way his mouth felt along the tracks left by Rion's nails. "I don't remember much anymore. Just you. Matthew's name. And my wish." Alex's lips were on her forehead. "And I didn't want you to see me like this. Broken." She sucked in a breath. "All I've got to offer you are nightmares."

"That's not true."

"It is."

"It's not." His arms were tight around her waist. "I…remember everything. I tracked down everyone Rion kept. Some of them died a long time ago but Matthew's in his seventies. He's a retired CPA in upstate New York. Whatever you wished for, it saved a lot of people."

"I wished that every price Rion exacted for his bargains came from himself instead of his victims. Uncle Sam said that caused something called a reality quake. I mean, I've got my voice back and everything. But…" Lia brushed her fingers against his neck, tilting her head up.

Alex didn't say anything, just brought his lips down on top of hers. She recoiled when his mouth opened slightly, a flash of fire blossoms in her eyes as Rion's teeth came down on her lip before he sucked her tongue inside and swallowed it whole, but then she felt Alex breathe and tightened her arms around his neck, bracing herself against him with her elbows locked underneath his hair. His hands clutched at her sundress, pulling her as tight against him as he could manage.

"I'm pretty screwed up, Alex." It was a whisper against his neck.

"We're all screwed up."

"I'm the kind of screwed up that wakes up screaming and I can't even change my clothes by myself." If she had one wish left, it would be that he'd stop looking at her like she was going to break if he breathed on her too hard. "The only thing I'm _not_ in therapy for is an Electra complex."

"The nightmares aren't going to scare me," he returned seriously before a broad smile lit up his face, "And I can probably _force_ myself to help you change your clothes. That's nothing compared to the number of times you've puked on me." He had the grace not to mention the number of cuts he had cleaned, the bruises he had cooled with water.

"Has anyone ever told you that you're a glutton for punishment, Alexander Thomas Newbery? You moved to _Chicago_ for some screwed-up girl with chicken legs that don't even work."

"It's a family curse." Alex said it lightly but he was serious again, the ghost of a memory flickering in his eyes. "That's why Rion came to my father." And there was a wild sound in his voice, the way his vowels stretched full of green growing grass and the sun washing over their skin through the leaves of the oak tree. "And it's why I still remember, Lia." Alex had one hand on her calf, stroking gently; tingling right up into her spine. Lia shivered. "Hey," he asked softly. "What's wrong?"

"I…felt my leg." Lia shivered again when Alex brushed her thigh lightly with the tips of his fingers, raising more prickles that made her want to laugh because she could _feel_ it, but she tightened her arms again around his neck instead – just enough strength left to hitch herself up and kiss him.

There were screams and yells from the field, a whirlwind of voices underneath the summer sky as her brothers and her cousins squared off against each other, and giggles coming from the old swing set. Uncle Joe had put another slab of ribs on the grill, cooking it slow with sweet molasses and honey before he slathered it in barbecue sauce. Dad's cackle rose over it all and Mom's smile when she joined in made her look just like the picture on the refrigerator.

Even Alex was chuckling, a low rumble against her side as she let her head rest easy against his shoulder.

As she held on.

\- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

You're gonna have to be your own prince charming.   
Gonna have to ride your own stallion.   
Gonna have to find your own castle.   
Gonna have to raise your own sail   
and there's gonna be a happy ending   
but that's only the beginning.   
This ain't no fairy tale.

**Author's Note:**

> I selected two prompts for the spn_xx challenge:
> 
> 1\. Sleeping Beauty waking herself up, Cinderella trading her slippers for something more comfortable, Snow White taking up metalwork.  
> 2\. "And though she be but little, she is fierce." William Shakespeare
> 
> The title of this story is a lyric from the song "Prince Charming" by the incomparable Jim's Big Ego. The lyrics quoted at the beginning and end of the story are also from "Prince Charming" by JBE.
> 
> I really wanted to write a story about the character's coming of age and fairy tales are perfect in that regard. "Prince Charming" is about just that: a woman coming into her own, marking the beginning of her story. Not to mention that it all comes about because of a car accident thanks to a literal interpretation of the lyric.
> 
> The one I selected specifically was Sleeping Beauty. The first prompt reflected this idea, how the victim becomes the heroine, and I had an inkling as to how to accomplish that. The second prompt was what cinched it for me – it's how Sam describes Lia's mother and was the second link to fairy tales. When I realized that the prompts together are the perfect combination to describe a girl raised by Dean Winchester and Penny Hillsworth, my brain went ping and here we are.
> 
> So, I decided to set the story within my Gobsmacked AU. To this point, there's been nothing in canon to preclude the existence of faery but that AU was deliberately written to incorporate the idea of them by turning existing fairy tales on their head. I have this thing about fairy tales as modern myth, variations on older stories, and I can see versions of them within modern American folklore and urban legends. Unlike other stories within the 'verse, however, this one wanted to sound like a fairy tale – so it's heavy on the imagery and more deliberate in its symbology even though Lia's inner voice sometimes sounds like a dock worker.
> 
> (See, not even a word about the Descent into Hell... ;-P I slacked on the notes, yo.)


End file.
